Best Buy's Geek Squad to Test Mitsubishi i-MiEV

Written by Bryan Johannsen

Best Buy's in house technical support, repair and installation unit, known as the "Geek Squad" can be seen driving throughout your city in their corporate colored Volkswagen Beetles though a new lease and testing deal with Mitsubishi may have you seeing them in the battery powered i-MiEV electric car.

Currently the i-MiEV is only available in Japan and about 800 of the tiny vehicle are on the roads there but a deal with Best Buy will see at least 4 of them coming to US to be used as home support and installation vehicles for the big box electronics retailer. A new ride for the Geek Squad may be just in time as Volkswagen announced the end of production for the New Beetle at the 2009 LA Auto Show.

The opportunity is a good one for Mitsubishi who wants to bring the i-MiEV to the US in the next few years. The deal gets them plenty of real world road test experience, visibility for the car since it will almost certainly be sent to densely populated areas and news coverage just like this article.

Currently it looks like the price tag for the i-MiEV will be around $50,000 when it gets here so Mitsubishi still has some work to do. We just can't see the tiny, jelly bean shaped cr catching on at that price, especially with the Tesla Model S coming in at around the same figure.

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