The Mitsubishi Motors iMiEV city car was announced as the winner of the Japanese Car of the Year ‘Most Advanced Technology’ award yesterday at the 41st Tokyo International Motor Show 2009. The car was praised for its high-performance lithium-ion battery technology and achieving early mass-production.

The car was available in Japan from July this year with all 1,400 of this year’s units destined for the Japanese market already sold. An additional 900 orders have also been received in Japan for the 2010 build allocation.

European production is scheduled to begin in October 2010 and will be available in left hand drive markets across Continental Europe towards the end of the year, according to market. The UK, which benefits from being a right hand drive market as in Japan, will see its first cars go onto UK roads in December this year.

For those of you who remember Red Dwarf, the British comedy Sci-Fi, Robert Llewellyn who played Kryten, has a weekly Internet video podcast called Car Pool where Robert takes a special guest for a lift somewhere and ‘interviews’ them on the way. Recently, Robert did a special episode of Car Pool all about the iMiev.

You can see it here: Mitsubishi iMiev CarPool review and you can catch other episodes of Car Pool here: Llewtube.