First Look At the U.S. Sized Mitsubishi iMiEV

Historically, Americans haven’t been all that fond of small cars. So how do you sell a small car in America? Make it bigger! At least that is what Mitsubishi will do for its U.S.-spec i-MiEV electric car.

Ok, that isn’t exactly a fair assertion of American cars. After all, the Corvette isn’t that big, and when the Mustang came out it was fairly compact too. So Americans do like compact cars…sometimes. In the case of the i-MiEV though, Mitsubishi thought it wise to give U.S. consumers a big more wiggle room. These are the first pictures of the U.S.-spec i-MiEV, which will debut at the L.A. Auto Show later this month.

Compared with the Japanese and European-spec cars, the U.S. i-MiEV is 11.2 inches longer, 4.3 inches wider, and just 0.2 inches taller. It will also come with more features standard like stability control and a tire pressure monitoring system. With a targeted price of below $30,000, the i-MiEV will have a range of somewhere between 80 and 100 miles, depending on the size of the battery pack.

The i-MiEV seems destined for fleet consumers at first when it goes on sale sometime in 2011 in the U.S. Did Mitsubishi really have to make the i-MiEV bigger though, or is this just their way of telling us we have to lose a few pounds?

Source: Gas2.0