Slow Charging: Fixed!

The stock 'charger brick' that comes with the car isn't really a charger at all. The trick liquid-cooled 3.3 KWatt charger is actually built into the car. The cord/connector thingy is called an EVSE and it's kind of a pregnant extension cord with just a little 'smarts' in the brick. Not very much smarts it turns out since Mitsubishi listened to their lawyers instead of to anyone who would have to actually USE the darn thing. Like most products designed by lawyers it only just barely works at all, taking some 21-22 hours to generate a full charge. Unfortunately the seats are not comfortable enough for a nap that long. The very same equipment in Europe  (minus some of the dumbing-down) charges the car in something under 10 hours. What gives?
I guess the American consumer is just that much dumber, or, more likely to sue if plugging it into a house whose electrical system hasn't been updated since 1920 causes it to burn down.
You can buy a faster (higher current) version of the same equipment for around $1000, but it turns out you don't have to. Some clever folks noticed that the 'dummed down' version we get is almost identical on the inside to the 'faster' Eurpoean version. They upgrade a couple components, update some firmware and 'Ta Da' your EVSE can now drive your 3.3KW charger to nearly it's limits.
Go to http://evseupgrade.com/ and you'll find that ours is not the only car with this problem.

Shown here is what I got back from the EVSE Upgrade folks about a week after I sent mine off to them.
The brick in the middle is the brains of the outfit (where the upgrades happened) the big white thing is the J1772 connector that you plug into your car (unchanged).
The 'other end' where the 120V plug would normally be has been changed to a L6-20 240V locking plug. Then they provide an adapter to go from that to the 'normal' 120V grounded plug. (shown toward the right)
I went a little wild and got the Dryer Plug adapter and the RV Plug adapter and another adapter (from L6-20 to L6-30) that 'adapts' to those adapters. That put my total$$ closer to $400 than the usual low $300 area you'd normally see including shipping. Still not a bad deal!

 

How does it work? Exactly as promised:
The 'stock' cord charges at 8 Amps (around 1000W) and takes 20-22 hours.
The upgraded cord charges at 13A  (around 1500W) and takes 14-16 hours (overnight)
The upgraded cord when plugged into a 240V outlet charges at 13A @ 240V (about 3100W) and takes about 7-8 hours for a full charge. However, since the last hour is given over to battery balancing and you rarely have the battery down below 'two bars' the real world answer is closer to 5 hours.
It's still not a great answer if you had to sit there and wait for it, but way better than a whole day.

Most Public Charging invrastructure can run the internal charger at full whack (yes, that's the technical term) and you're generally looking at something closer to four hours there. That's exactly what I did to 'get by' the week when my EVSE was off getting upgraded. Here I am:

I signed up for Ecototality/BLink https://www.blinknetwork.com/network.html
charger access. If you're a member (free of charge to sign up) they only hit you $1/hr for using any of the ~450 blink chargers in the state. This is the one at the OSU parking garage.
I also signed up for the AeroVironment network (also free) as they have the best coverage on the coast and on I5.
AeroVironment Network




[EDIT 2014: Looks like Ecototality went into bankruptcy. but came back out with BLink owned by someone else. That could have been a bummer since about 80% of the public charging infrastructure in the state are BLink network units. Hmmm.  AV (AeroVironment) is now charging $7.50 per charge on their charging stations. At least BLink is only about $5 worst case.]

General Driving & Private Joy. An Army of Mmmmm

Ya plug it in. Ya unplug in the morning. Ya drives. What could be simpler.
It's an Urban/subUrban Transportation Appliance. Mash the pedal and it GOES. Cornering is very well controlled. Brakes very well too. Everything 'just works' no muss no fuss no bother.
I plug it in every second or third day, unless I know there's a longer trip in store.
It goes from our base in Corvallis to Albany or Lebanon or Monroe without issues, or wanting more charge. Keeps up on the highway just fine. Fastest I've gone so far is around 75 and it handled that without issue. It just kinda goes Mmmmm . . along.

Here are the instruments as seen through the steering wheel, with a few distractions removed.

On the left is the Charge Gauge showing Six 'Bars' of charge (out of 16) and Gear status which is 'P' for Park. On the right is the Range Remaining (RR) display. More on that later.

In the middle is the digital speedometer and surrounding that is a big Ammeter gauge. Although it doesn's say 'Amps' on it, that's basically what it is. It's at Zero now (no surprise) and the Red needle moves to the left for re-gen (charging) during braking or coasting-in-gear and to the right to show how much current is being drawn from the batteries during normal running or acceleration. If there were numbered marking on the face the ammeter would show approximately 50, 100 and finally 150 Amps as the needle sweeps to the right.

Looking at the above RR=32 and Six bars of charge, you would reasonably guess that 16 bars (full charge) would translate into around 75 miles of range... and you'd be about right. The RR display functions by asking "How much charge did it take to go the last 15 miles traveled?" and then "If we assume we'll use up all the remaining charge at that same rate, here's how far we could go."

In the real world a full charge will get you somewhere between 50 miles (cold day, heater on and hiway driving) to maybe 90 miles in perfect (flat) conditions with no wind and a top speed of around 40mph. 'Normal' driving gets you somewhere inbetween. Probably closer to 60 miles than 80. Plus it's not a real great idea to run the battery flat on a regular basis. Leaving two bars on there is a good investment in battery life.

Purchase, and then some

Once we finally figured out the ramifications of the Ten Thousand Dollar 'Dealer Incentives' program, and, a quick look through the oh-so-diminished $coffers$, we went out looking for a car to buy. Considerable searching and calling later: as far as I can tell, there were three units left in the state.  None of them are the ES version that I wanted, and none of them have CHAdeMO high current charging, that would have been nice, but not essential.
The one in Eugene is a White with Blue SE with all the premium options -except- the potentially useful charger. *AND* it has eight thousand miles on it!  They've been using it as a 'parts hauler' and they STILL want $36K for it. (after dealer incentives 26K). Yuck. No way.

A Portland dealer, Gladstone Mitsubishi has two SE base models for $32K. That's more like it. One is Silver and one is White with the blue accents. We give them a call and get things set up for the next day. They're gonna have to give it a full charge because it's 77 miles away. Right at the very limits of the car's range.
So we get up there and Barry the lead salesman  (with the super whiz-bang EV certification) who is really a nice guy, insists that we test-drive it. I'm not keen since chewing ANY of the range sounds like a bad idea, but we'll have it on charge for an hour+ during 'paperwork' so off we go for two miles. Woo. Funny, it drives JUST like an MiEV. We got the White/Blue. Pretty spiffy.
OK so paperwork was more like two hours and that was probably enough charge time. Around $22K  @ 3%ish before federal tax credit fussing. Not so bad. About $14K total after taxes.

Having carefully plotted a route to mimimize high speed driving we finally leave the dealer about an hour before sunset. Within ten miles I think I'm in trouble. The seat heater won't turn off. Pops on every 5 mi. or so. Help help!! it's eating my range! Calling the dealer doesn't help. Turns out the switch is hidden by a tag on the keys that has flopped down and stuck to the dash. We don't figure it out until we're down in Salem.  A smart person would have signed up for the BLink and AeroVironment charger networks before leaving. I'm not so smart.
Even on local roads at 25mph we're gonna be short on charge. Having to turn the headlights on isn't helping. Fortunately my sister's place is just outside Albany. We hit 'Turtle Mode' (very low charge warning) about a mile from their place and stop off for a couple hours of very slow charging using the stock EVSE cord.
A funny thing happens. One of their vehicles is dying, so they decide they're gonna get an MiEV too. We know the silver one is still on the lot just having come from there, and we have the EV sale's guy's cell number. While we're charging, the next MiEV sale in Oregon gets arranged. These are the first people we've showed it to and suddenly they're buying one. Wonder if this is gonna be a regular event. ...I imagine *not* since there aren't any more units available in Oregon ...
The following day we drive them up to the dealership and wait while everything gets arranged and then shadow them back home using the same route as the previous voyage.
Edit: Since we also work together there are now frequently Two MiEV's in our parking lot. Work even provides charging! Interesting how things turn out.

Genesis:

After the Zap car burned down we started looking for something that would really work in the really real world.
All the noise getting generated at the time was surrounding the Nissan LEAF, *This* at last sounded like the be-all to end-all of pure electric vehicles. I read everything, subscribed to mailing lists, even acted as a volunteer talking head when the LEAF World Tour came to Portland.
I was *SO* stoked!
And then it finally showed up. We came. We saw. We did the math.  -aaand even after state and federal incentives it was almost $30K. That's too bloody expensive!
Especially if you've just bought a house. Talk about extinguishing your buying power...
Sure they're down around $24K now, but that was then.

Right in the middle of that, the Mitsubishi MiEV was announced. Read all the early noise and reviews. Waited, waited... The first two finally showed up in Oregon. Went down to Eugene. We were the second potential customers to test drive the first unit they got in and...
That's too bloody expensive!  Despite supposedly being 'much' less than the LEAF when it came out this one priced out to almost $28K AFTER incentives. Bummer.
Granted there was supposedly a cheaper (ES) model that would have worked out closer to $22K (after) but that was still kinda high for what it could do (which matched our needs almost exactly).
Anyway, I couldn't -quite- talk myself into going after one. And, there was still the house$$...

Fast-forward a year, during which I was mostly ignoring the problem.
An amazing thing happened. Mitsubishi USA turned out to be complete idiots. Various bits of internal infighting and other high quality product management had yielded a total of 588 vehicle sales for the entire year ending Dec.2012. That's for the entire nation. Woo Hoo: Fire Sale!
Only somehow Oregon seemed to get left out of the early version(s) of the Great MiEV Dealer Incentives Sale. After a flurry of interest, I went back to ignoring the problem. However, an even bigger announcement ($10K Off!) finally came to my attention in May. Yes I know, some people had jumped on this before I awoke to what was going on. Negotiations began. Results? well, that's another post...

Previous Attempts

Beginning with my first DIY electric bicycle project (12 mi.@ 18MPH) back in the '80's there have been a number of attempts to electrify our transportation stable.  'Stable' isn't quite the right word for some of them...  ;-)   First one:
http://www.evalbum.com/190
It's still hanging out on Mike's EV-Album and still running around N.C. as far as I know. It ran me to work for most of 8 years. Pretty good!

The second attempt was a screaming deal, it just didn't actually work very well.
The story: http://the-redmenace.blogspot.com/
and it's beginnings: http://the-redmenace.blogspot.com/2009/01/in-beginning.html

Not a whole lot positive to say about the R1. I learned a lot (of what not to do) It never did really prove very useful. The story is amusing in retrospect and I did get about half my money back out of it in the end, so it coulda been worse.

The third go'round was actually useful transportation for awhile.
It came to an exciting end though as you can see: http://lefantomeblanc.blogspot.com/

Those blogs have plenty of details if you're interested. There's also been a 2000 Honda Insight that got 72 MPG over the ten years I had it (and is still going strong for my neighbor) and a 2010 Insight that we leased while waiting for Honda to get it's electric car shit together (which I still don't think has happened.)
My S.O. has a 2010 3rd gen.Prius which works rather well, but obviously I prefer 'pure' electrics...