Yes, we know there are many people who aren’t enthusiastic about the limits of electric cars.

Some see the zero-emissions status of an EV as merely moving the pollutants from one location to another, from the tailpipe of the car to the smokestack of the power station. But we’re driving the i-MiEV in Los Angeles, where electricity comes from nuclear, natural gas, hydro and even a little wind and solar. This isn’t West Virginia coal country.

Others see battery-electric vehicles as a threat to freedom, as if government agents are coming to pry their Chevrolet Camaros from their cold, dead keisters. But having the choice of gasoline-free driving is just another freedom.

We hope that life with an electric car will show us whether there is anything to fear and anything else to love about this alternative-fueled vehicle, show us the good, the bad and the ugly of these things. Firsthand experience is always better than some theoretical conclusion arrived at after drinking or listening to talk radio.

The i-MiEV is our first long-term electric car, and so far, we love it. Long-term in this case means three months. Mitsubishi doesn’t exactly have these things lying around taking up space in the overflow parking lot. The longest they could part with it is three months.

The particular i-MiEV we have is a right-hand-drive, Japanese-spec model. The U.S.-spec car arrives in fall 2011, or maybe a little later than that. In addition to having the steering wheel on the left, the U.S.-spec i-MiEV will be four inches wider to accommodate our side-impact standards. In either spec, there is full upright seating for four real adults and even some luggage space behind the rear seat. The price will be about $30,000.

The i-MiEV is the electric version of the i, a gasoline-powered, 660-cc model sold in Japan. Our electric i-MiEV has a 47-kilowatt permanent magnet electric motor driving the rear wheels, powered by a 16-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack.

The name, after the lowercase i, stands for Mitsubishi innovative Electric Vehicle. It’s pronounced “eye meev,” which means “stinky egg” in German, by the way. It is in the kei class of vehicles in Japan, the smallest class it has. Here in America, we have been introduced to slightly larger B-class cars such as the Nissan Versa, the Honda Fit and the Toyota Yaris. This is smaller than those on the outside but feels just as roomy on the inside.

We can’t argue with those who say the i-MiEV is not a performance car. For a performance EV, you’ll want a Tesla roadster. We know the i-MiEV is a dog at the drag strip because we did the whole phalanx of AutoWeek long-term-car tests and got the following:

--0-60 mph: 11.9 seconds
--Quarter-mile: 18.7 seconds @ 72.6 mph
--60-0 mph: 159.6 feet
--Slalom: 38.3 mph
--Skidpad: 0.62 g

Bad as they are, those numbers are way better than another slave to efficiency, the gasoline-powered, 660-cc, three-cylinder Smart ForTwo, which went from 0 to 60 mph in 14 seconds in our testing.

This car was set up for efficiency, not performance, however. Mitsubishi went with a smaller battery pack to keep weight and cost down. Claimed range on a full charge is 50 to 70 miles. That’s less than the 100-mile claimed range of the Nissan Leaf electric and well short of the Tesla Roadster’s 244 miles. But the average city dweller drives less than 40 miles a day, Mitsubishi says, so the average guy is covered.

We have it in Los Angeles for the entire three months and plan to drive it back and forth to work every day, a distance of 44 miles. After a week and a half of doing just that, we have found one fairly interesting thing: While there is much discussion and debate about 240-volt Level II and 440-volt Level III chargers that can get the batteries back up to full capacity in two hours or 25 minutes, respectively, we found that a simple 120-volt wall plug is all we have needed so far. Depending on a lot of things, from whether we run the air conditioning or the headlights to how slowly we accelerate, we can eat up about half a charge in 44 miles of driving, sometimes a little more than half. With electricity costing as little as 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, we can drive for much less than a buck a day. Nothing short of a bicycle comes close.

Check back with us here over the next three months to see how our stewardship progresses and what the future may be like. So far, we are perfectly happy commuters.