Trade.Information

Mitsubishi Motors has Prioritized the Development of i-MiEV in 2009

Mitsubishi Motors Corporation has prioritized the development of the i-MiEV for introduction to the Japanese domestic market in 2009 and has confirmed its plans for introduction to Europe in 2010. MMC’s electric vehicle strategy is to become one of the leading car manufacturers of electric vehicles in the world.

Mitsubishi Motors in the UK has however requested that a proportion of the first 2,000 Right Hand Drive units be allocated to the UK to support a launch in London in 2009. This is currently being seriously considered.

Lithium Energy Japan had initially intended to make batteries for 2,000 vehicles a year at its main plant in Kyoto. Mitsubishi Motors, however, raised its output target for the i-MiEV in response to higher demand expectations based upon a hugely positive response from the UK and other European markets. Along with other factors, this has prompted the project to build a separate plant to supply the additional anticipated demand.

The brand new plant is scheduled to be ready for next April’s start of production of the i-MiEV all-electric 5-door city car. The plant will initially produce 1 million palm-size lithium-ion cells a year, which is enough to power 10,000 vehicles. An additional investment of more than 10 billion yen is planned by 2012 to add a second plant and doubling output to cope with demand.

About Mitsubishi Motors Corporation
Mitsubishi Motors Corporation is the sixth largest automaker in Japan and the seventeenth largest in the world by global unit sales. It is part of the Mitsubishi keiretsu, formerly the biggest industrial group in Japan, and was formed in 1970 from the automotive division of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

Throughout its history it has courted alliances with foreign partners, a strategy pioneered by their first president Tomio Kubo to encourage expansion, and continued by his successors. A significant stake was sold to Chrysler Corporation in 1971 which it held for 22 years, while DaimlerChrysler was a controlling shareholder between 2000 and 2005. Long term joint manufacturing and technology licencing deals with the Hyundai Motor Company in South Korea and Proton in Malaysia were also forged, while in Europe the company co-owned the largest automobile manufacturing plant in the Netherlands with Volvo for ten years in the 1990s, before taking sole ownership in 2001.

Thanks to these alliances it benefitted strongly in the 1970s and '80s, increasing its annual production from 250,000 to over 1.5 million units. But its strong presence in south-east Asia meant it suffered more than most of its competitors in the aftermath of the 1997 East Asian financial crisis, and since then the company has struggled to consistently increase sales and maintain profitability.

The logo of three red diamonds, shared with over forty other companies within the keiretsu, predates Mitsubishi Motors itself by almost a century. It was chosen by Yataro Iwasaki, the founder of Mitsubishi, as it was suggestive of the emblem of the Tosa Clan who first employed him, and because his own family crest was three rhombuses stacked atop each other. The name Mitsubishi is a portmanteau of mitsu ("three") and hishi (literally, "water chestnut", often used in Japanese to denote a diamond or rhombus).