7 minute read
MINI Electric
She’s electric!
Andrew Walker rekindles his love affair with MINI – and finds the all-electric version is a suitable model to carry the famous brand into a new era of motoring
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As a past owner of both a 1980’s MINI and the newer version circa 2004, I was really looking forward to driving the MINI electric. Thanks to lockdown, our original loan date in April was postponed and I finally got my hands on one in late September.
I’m unashamedly a MINI fan and as I found out, the electric version does an awful of MINI things well.
For a start it looks and feels, well, like a normal MINI. So factor in a plush, well thought out and funky cabin. With the 32.5 kWh battery located beneath the back seats and underneath the centre of the car, forming a T shape, you also get excellent handling and the bonus of a 0-62mph time of just 7.3 seconds from the 181bhp electric motor. It’s as close to a very fast dodgem car that I’ve encountered yet and is great fun both in town and on the motorway.
So that customers and the public alike can tell that this is an electric MINI the range is offered with yellow trim panels and alloy wheels that replicate a three-pin plug socket. If you don’t want to shout your greenness to the world, don’t worry, because you can swap any of the electric detailing for other designs, save the model’s yellow electric badge and filled-in grille.
For starters, there are three specs of electric MINI offered, which are simply called Level 1, 2 or 3. Including the £3,000 Government grant, the Level 1 can be bought for £24,900.
Each level adds slightly more kit but all models start with SatNav, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, climate and cruise control. Level 2 costs an additional £2,000 but for that cash you get a parking camera, an interior lights package, rear view camera, heated front seats
TECH DATA MINI Electric 2 Price: £26,900 (after Government grant) Engine: Single electric motor, 32.5kWh battery Power/torque: 181bhp/270Nm Transmission: Single-speed automatic, front-wheel drive 0-62mph: 7.3 seconds Top speed: 93 mph Range: 145 miles CO2: 0g/km
and rear park distance control. Add another £4,000 for Level 3 and this brings a touch more luxury, with a Harman Kardon stereo, a panoramic glass sunroof, a larger central infotainment screen, full leather upholstery and parking assist.
Let’s tackle the ‘elephant in the room’ first though, and that’s the MINI electric range. MINI claims it is 229km, which equates to 145 miles. When the MINI was delivered to Company Car and Van, the instrumentation said it was fully charged, with a range of 105 miles. So how then can it claim to be 145 miles? Well, the electric MINI comes with four drive modes; Sport, Mid, Green and Green+, which turns off the air con, and there’s a clever regeneration switch on the dashboard located alongside the starter button.The regeneration switch alters the amount of regen on the go and what’s really good about it is that you can set it to ‘high’ even when you’re driving on the motorway and it doesn’t spoil the ride.
So the secret is, you have to keep your wits about you regarding the range – but we reckon you’ll get used to it in time. For example, we drove to Liverpool for a weekend break, a distance of 33 miles door to door, of which 27 miles were on the motorway. I left the MINI in Green+ as I expected the battery range would drop quickly. But it didn’t – indeed, quite the opposite in fact.
We set off with a battery range of 105 miles and having driven 33 miles, expected the range to now show around 60-65 miles. But it showed 85 miles; in other words, as you go forward, MINI Electric is working hard to claw back the range for you. Over the course of our week in the MINI, we found that by driving in
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Green or Green+ with the regen set at its highest, we were able to save around a third of the range on every journey we made. This accounts for the claimed 145-mile range that MINI say the electric version has. Clever, very clever – but it’s something you’d have to get used to as time went by.
Not having driven a three-door MINI for some time, I had forgotten that it’s not very big inside. We’ve also owned a MINI Countryman and that’s a proper family car, so the lack of space in the 3-door version is noticeable. To be fair, there’s decent enough room up front, but rear head and especially legroom are poor. The boot will take four large holdalls though, and there’s a shelf, underneath which you can hide the two power cables, a home three-pin and a 7kWh. Both fit neatly inside clever black bags.
Although I have a Rolec home charger (more about this at http://www.rolecserv.com/ home-charging) I took the opportunity to charge the MINI up at my local Tesco, where you can get two hours free when shopping if you’re plugged-in to their Podpoint chargers, and similarly at Cheshire Oaks Shopping Village, which offers a range of Chargemaster machines. A word of advice for fledgling electric car owners: always download the charging companies’ Apps so that you can take advantage of free charging where it’s offered.
As a driver’s car, the electric MINI is more fun to drive than most other cars. It’s easy to point into and out of a corner and comes with decent straight line power. It’s also very quiet and is comfortable in town.
And despite that small stature it’s also happy on the motorway and you can easily overtake MINI has launched its new focus on drivetrain technologies, vehicle segments and services of the future.
At the centre of this realignment is the expansion of electromobility, enhanced commitment in the crossover and premium compact segments and strengthening of the market position in China. “MINI was always the answer to very special challenges relating to individual mobility. And the willingness to reinvent the status quo continues to shape the brand to this day,” commented Bernd Körber, Head of MINI. “Alongside electromobility, harnessing new target groups and sales markets will be crucially important for the future of MINI.” 20 years have now passed since the premiere of the second MINI generation after the relaunch of the traditional British heritage
Plug-in and you’re on the charge: The MINI deserves plaudits for its clever regeneration options which keep the range high
slow moving traffic if required. All in all, it’s hard to fault.
For business customers there’s no BIK, or CO2 emissions, so if you can live with the more limited range that on some of its rivals – the Peugeot e-208 and Vauxhall Corsa-e will get you closer to a 200-mile range – then the only real competition as far as appeal goes comes from the decidedly retro Honda-e, but this has its challenges in that it has only a 100-mile range. Plainly, if you have a home charger and are lucky enough to have one at work too, range won’t be an issue. And if the range is still a problem, then it’s well to remember that the average daily commute by car in the UK is brand. Since then around four million vehicles of the brand have been produced at the MINI plant in Oxford and delivered to more than 100 countries all over the world.
Customer needs and wishes have defined the development of the MINI model range over somewhere around 30 miles. Mind you, we’d stress that this is not a car for a 400-mile round trip.
VERDICT Electric hasn’t dampened the fun. Still a MINI at heart, with great fun to be had on the road – and a range that makes it ideal for average commutes and urban life
CC&V RATING:
Electric motoring added to the MINI tradition
N N N N the past two decades – with the fun of driving combined with efficiency deeply rooted within the traditions of the British brand.
Now, emission-free mobility has been firmly established in the model range too, and in the MINI community.
With the MINI Countryman Plug-in Hybrid alone, (combined fuel consumption: 2.0 – 1.7 l/100 km; combined electricity consumption: 14.0 – 13.1 kWh/100 km; combined CO2 emissions: 45 – 40 g/km), vehicles with electrified drive accounted for five percent of the brand’s total sales in 2019. Following the launch of the MINI Electric (combined fuel consumption: 0.0 l/100 km; combined electricity consumption: 16.8 – 14.8 kWh/ 100 km; combined CO2 emissions: 0 g/km), this rate has doubled to ten percent of all new registrations for the brand.
