RE: Mini Electric is here!
Wednesday 10th July 2019
Mini Electric is here!
130 miles of range and £299 a month - is this the Mini to make electric mainstream?
Cast your mind back a decade, to the original Mini E concept. How far-fetched it seemed then; 600 cars were built, trialled around the UK with willing customers to assess electric vehicle usage for a future production car. Back then, a viable, sensibly priced electric Mini seemed aeons off, this being a world where the Tesla Roadster was needlessly wacky, the hybrid hypercar holy trinity was years away and the BMW i8 just a concept.
Yet here we are in 2019, with a Mini Electric developed off the back of those trials and available to buy right now - handily marking the 60th anniversary, too. Using a 32.6kWh battery and BMW's latest synchronous electric motor, the Mini Electric makes 184hp and 199lb ft, enough for a 7.3-second 0-62mph sprint and limited 93mph top speed. Interestingly, Mini is also suggesting that electric drive "takes the trademark Mini go-kart driving feeling to new heights, thanks to new suspension technology designed for this model." With a centre of gravity "at least" 30mm lower than a Cooper S and less weight over the nose (because the battery pack is between the front and rear seats), it should drive pretty nicely. "Exceptional driving dynamics" might be going a tad far, but the signs are good, especially with a DIN kerbweight of 1,365kg - 145kg more than a Cooper S auto, sure, but also 100kg less than those original Mini E prototypes.
As for charging, the Electric is designed for AC and DC charging using Type 2 and CCS Combo 2 plugs. A 50kW DC fast charge can provide an 80 per cent charge in 30 mins - fully juiced, the WLTP range is between 124 and 144 miles - and the same level of battery replenishment takes 150 mins via an AC 11kW connection. The Mini Electric charge point is where the fuel filler would be in a regular Mini, and a charge level indicator sits above it.
Elsewhere, the Electric is fairly familiar Mini: there are four drive modes - Green +, Green, Mid and Sport - and the standard 6.5-inch touchscreen with Apple CarPlay and Real Time Traffic Info. The heater is 75 per cent more efficient than a normal one. Also very Mini is the Electric's range of trim levels - you don't just buy an EV Mini. Oh no. The entry model is £24,400 after the government plug-in grant has been applied, or £299 a month plus a £4k initial rental for a 48-month PCH. Above that sits the mid-level version, which is £26,400 and adds heated seats, park distance control, a Driving Assistance pack, plus a wider range of colour and wheel options. The most expensive Mini Electric is £30,400 and comes kitted out with a larger 8.8-inch infotainment screen, panoramic roof, Matrix LEDs and a Harmon Kardon sound system.
Orders are being taken now, with build slots secured through a £500 deposit and first deliveries starting next spring. Which is about the same time the Honda e is expected, promising the same sort of experience for the same sort of money. Could you see either as your next day-to-day city car? If neither especially appeals, rumours are now circulating once more that the Rocketman will make production. That's still to be confirmed, though; the Mini Electric is definitely happening, and it's a matter of months away...
Discussion
It's not £299 per month though, is it?
£4000 up front plus £299 per month (and that's for the base model!) for a car which will probably struggle to do 100 miles on a charge. No thanks!
£4000 up front plus £299 per month (and that's for the base model!) for a car which will probably struggle to do 100 miles on a charge. No thanks!
Edited by nuttywobbler on Wednesday 10th July 10:40
Edited by nuttywobbler on Wednesday 10th July 10:41
nuttywobbler said:
It's not £299 per month though, is it?
Looks to be equivalent to £382.33 per month if you flatten it out. As a rough equivalent, that's equivalent to a 48 month bank loan on about £17,000. So rent an electric Mini for four years, or buy outright and own a 17K car after 4 years? (I know, I know, used versus new and electric versus petrol mis-comparison)https://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds/used-cars/...
joshleb said:
Does this not have a lower range than other electrics on the market?
Most of the bigger cars have a range of between 200 and 300 miles. However I think this is more like a competitor to city cars like the Honda e which has a range of around 125 miles. I guess in reality it will be enough for a lot of people to commute into town and back and charge up each night.Plate spinner said:
nuttywobbler said:
It's not £299 per month though, is it? £4000 up front plus £299 per month
Agreed. Why not say £10 per month and in the small print ‘plus £18,000 up front’. This is the ideal car for herself in doors when she wants to drive down to the local village to have her hair done. Leave it parked up on the gravel driveway for a few days while she sips G&T watching Pedro the gardener prune her bushes. With her husband always away working hard, he's able to purchase the proper high capacity charger than the MINI needs for it to be a practical form of transport. She doesn't like it though, as she'd rather sit in her garden and watch Pedro's glistening torso in the light of her beautiful, lonely garden in her surburban paradise.
A world away from the rest of the mainstream, who live in the city centre and are encouraged to purchase electric vechicles on their "green" credentials. The same people who bought diesels 10 years ago based on the same creentials. Except this time they haven't got access to a high powered charger, and the extension lead they have won't reach their car parked in either the underground car park or on the street. Instead they rely on charging the car when they visit their local Tesco's, but alas today the two charging points there are full. Not by disgusting petrol/diesel drivers, but by other people who - just like them - can't charge their precious status symbol at home. They decide to drive to a local service station, a bit of a trek away from their flat, only to find that the Ecotricity charger that's available either doesn't work with their car or doesn't work full stop. Dejected, they start to drive home. Only to run out of battery. The car stops, unable to move. It's an hour to wait for the AA to come and rescue them, to bring the car to a suitable location. But the Tesco charging point is now available but out of use. Alone, they leave the car plugged in, with the hope it'll charge by morning. They trudge away while booking an Uber through their unrecycled iPhone XS, and await their fossil fuelled hybrid carriage while tucking in to a Chicken and Avacado sandwich, wondering how life has gone so wrong for them to live in a council borough that won't allow you to run extension leads on or over the pavements outside their box rooms in London.
That, is why, this car isn't for the mainstream. No plug in electric car will ever be one.
A world away from the rest of the mainstream, who live in the city centre and are encouraged to purchase electric vechicles on their "green" credentials. The same people who bought diesels 10 years ago based on the same creentials. Except this time they haven't got access to a high powered charger, and the extension lead they have won't reach their car parked in either the underground car park or on the street. Instead they rely on charging the car when they visit their local Tesco's, but alas today the two charging points there are full. Not by disgusting petrol/diesel drivers, but by other people who - just like them - can't charge their precious status symbol at home. They decide to drive to a local service station, a bit of a trek away from their flat, only to find that the Ecotricity charger that's available either doesn't work with their car or doesn't work full stop. Dejected, they start to drive home. Only to run out of battery. The car stops, unable to move. It's an hour to wait for the AA to come and rescue them, to bring the car to a suitable location. But the Tesco charging point is now available but out of use. Alone, they leave the car plugged in, with the hope it'll charge by morning. They trudge away while booking an Uber through their unrecycled iPhone XS, and await their fossil fuelled hybrid carriage while tucking in to a Chicken and Avacado sandwich, wondering how life has gone so wrong for them to live in a council borough that won't allow you to run extension leads on or over the pavements outside their box rooms in London.
That, is why, this car isn't for the mainstream. No plug in electric car will ever be one.
nuttywobbler said:
It's not £299 per month though, is it?
£4000 up front plus £299 per month (and that's for the base model!) for a car which will probably struggle to do 100 miles on a charge. No thanks!
Exactly - £4k up front equates to another £83pm over four years, so the true cost is already £382pm£4000 up front plus £299 per month (and that's for the base model!) for a car which will probably struggle to do 100 miles on a charge. No thanks!
My rattly old Alfa GT diesel cost £4k to buy and I get a month's commuting out of a tank. Even if the electricity was free for the Mini, the cost of the Mini is almost two and a half times the cost of running the Alfa over four years (and at the end of the four years I would still own a rattly old Alfa GT, whereas with the Mini, you're back on Shank's Pony, having to fork out another initial PCH payment for the next car)
And before I get accused of polluting the planet, how much pollution have I saved by putting a quarter of a million miles on the Alfa, rather than on three brand new cars over the same period?
sgtBerbatov said:
Not for bus w
kers.
This is very true. It’s like most non essential goods in life, they tend to be bought by people who have the means to indulge themselves. kers. But like Champagne, there are some better Proseccos out there for other budgets and ultimately there is Whote Lightning down at the bus w
ker level. Something for everyone, but obviously not everything for everyone. With a low range and a high price tag it seems pretty obvious, even to the most bitter, that this is a product designed to target those with the means to both buy it and use it and that does seem to aimed at the suburban runabout sector.
sgtBerbatov said:
This is the ideal car for herself in doors when she wants to drive down to the local village to have her hair done. Leave it parked up on the gravel driveway for a few days while she sips G&T watching Pedro the gardener prune her bushes. With her husband always away working hard, he's able to purchase the proper high capacity charger than the MINI needs for it to be a practical form of transport. She doesn't like it though, as she'd rather sit in her garden and watch Pedro's glistening torso in the light of her beautiful, lonely garden in her surburban paradise.
A world away from the rest of the mainstream, who live in the city centre and are encouraged to purchase electric vechicles on their "green" credentials. The same people who bought diesels 10 years ago based on the same creentials. Except this time they haven't got access to a high powered charger, and the extension lead they have won't reach their car parked in either the underground car park or on the street. Instead they rely on charging the car when they visit their local Tesco's, but alas today the two charging points there are full. Not by disgusting petrol/diesel drivers, but by other people who - just like them - can't charge their precious status symbol at home. They decide to drive to a local service station, a bit of a trek away from their flat, only to find that the Ecotricity charger that's available either doesn't work with their car or doesn't work full stop. Dejected, they start to drive home. Only to run out of battery. The car stops, unable to move. It's an hour to wait for the AA to come and rescue them, to bring the car to a suitable location. But the Tesco charging point is now available but out of use. Alone, they leave the car plugged in, with the hope it'll charge by morning. They trudge away while booking an Uber through their unrecycled iPhone XS, and await their fossil fuelled hybrid carriage while tucking in to a Chicken and Avacado sandwich, wondering how life has gone so wrong for them to live in a council borough that won't allow you to run extension leads on or over the pavements outside their box rooms in London.
That, is why, this car isn't for the mainstream. No plug in electric car will ever be one.
A world away from the rest of the mainstream, who live in the city centre and are encouraged to purchase electric vechicles on their "green" credentials. The same people who bought diesels 10 years ago based on the same creentials. Except this time they haven't got access to a high powered charger, and the extension lead they have won't reach their car parked in either the underground car park or on the street. Instead they rely on charging the car when they visit their local Tesco's, but alas today the two charging points there are full. Not by disgusting petrol/diesel drivers, but by other people who - just like them - can't charge their precious status symbol at home. They decide to drive to a local service station, a bit of a trek away from their flat, only to find that the Ecotricity charger that's available either doesn't work with their car or doesn't work full stop. Dejected, they start to drive home. Only to run out of battery. The car stops, unable to move. It's an hour to wait for the AA to come and rescue them, to bring the car to a suitable location. But the Tesco charging point is now available but out of use. Alone, they leave the car plugged in, with the hope it'll charge by morning. They trudge away while booking an Uber through their unrecycled iPhone XS, and await their fossil fuelled hybrid carriage while tucking in to a Chicken and Avacado sandwich, wondering how life has gone so wrong for them to live in a council borough that won't allow you to run extension leads on or over the pavements outside their box rooms in London.
That, is why, this car isn't for the mainstream. No plug in electric car will ever be one.
Enjoyed that!
This is a new car, for people who want a new car, not a used car. Comparisons with used cars are futile, because people who are happy to have a used car will almost always get better value out of having a used car. That's not the point.
The point is that this is the first attainable big brand car that a lot of people will be familiar with and would want to own, so it will be really interesting to see how it does. It's a Mini, but it's electric. That will be very, very comforting for a lot of people as it's instantly familiar.
Petrolheads aren't the target, people like my wife with her petrol Cooper are. She doesn't really know anything about cars, but she knows what she likes and the Mini ticks all the boxes for her. She likes the idea of EVs generally but finds everything affordable which is currently on the market unappealing for one reason or another. The Zoe has a crap interior, the i3 "looks weird", etc, etc. Home charging an EV would be easy for us. She doesn't need a car which can do hundreds of miles more than once in a blue moon, and she can drive my car if she ever does need to do a long journey.
I think it'll sell by the bucket-load.
The point is that this is the first attainable big brand car that a lot of people will be familiar with and would want to own, so it will be really interesting to see how it does. It's a Mini, but it's electric. That will be very, very comforting for a lot of people as it's instantly familiar.
Petrolheads aren't the target, people like my wife with her petrol Cooper are. She doesn't really know anything about cars, but she knows what she likes and the Mini ticks all the boxes for her. She likes the idea of EVs generally but finds everything affordable which is currently on the market unappealing for one reason or another. The Zoe has a crap interior, the i3 "looks weird", etc, etc. Home charging an EV would be easy for us. She doesn't need a car which can do hundreds of miles more than once in a blue moon, and she can drive my car if she ever does need to do a long journey.
I think it'll sell by the bucket-load.
Edited by anonymous-user on Wednesday 10th July 11:33
Baileyk said:
You realise that eventually these will depreciate to 4k and be tatty like your Alfa (with a high mileage) and then you can do cheap motoring?
But to me the unresolved question about electric cars is how they will perform once shagged and cheap. Will the batteries be OK? Will it be a case of them being written off because of the battery replacement costs? Or will they just be still running around but with a reduced range capacity...?This is from the ad for the highest mileage Tesla in the classifieds:
"It has been fully maintained by Tesla having recently had a full health check including the battery degradation test, which returned an impressive result of only 6% to 9% of usable battery degradation.
This Tesla has covered 90,000 miles."
https://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds/used-cars/...
Edited by Ryvita on Wednesday 10th July 11:33
Will be interesting to see what this is like. The range is a bit less than you would hope but, seeing as it's based on a normal car that is supposed to drive reasonably well, it would be very interesting to see if it manages to provide a more engaging experience than some of the other EVs out there.
Your last point is perfectly valid of course but, again, in order for you to have your old car, someone had to buy it new at one time. The ultimate solution to the problem of pollution caused by transport is of course to produce and use less cars, but that doesn't fit very well with economics, which is what is behind a lot environmental decisions in reality.
Nigel_O said:
Exactly - £4k up front equates to another £83pm over four years, so the true cost is already £382pm
My rattly old Alfa GT diesel cost £4k to buy and I get a month's commuting out of a tank. Even if the electricity was free for the Mini, the cost of the Mini is almost two and a half times the cost of running the Alfa over four years (and at the end of the four years I would still own a rattly old Alfa GT, whereas with the Mini, you're back on Shank's Pony, having to fork out another initial PCH payment for the next car)
And before I get accused of polluting the planet, how much pollution have I saved by putting a quarter of a million miles on the Alfa, rather than on three brand new cars over the same period?
But your Alfa wasn't £4,000 when it was new, was it? In order for you to buy it for that price, someone had to buy it new at one point. As seems to be pointed out and time and time again on this website, comparing old and new is pointless.My rattly old Alfa GT diesel cost £4k to buy and I get a month's commuting out of a tank. Even if the electricity was free for the Mini, the cost of the Mini is almost two and a half times the cost of running the Alfa over four years (and at the end of the four years I would still own a rattly old Alfa GT, whereas with the Mini, you're back on Shank's Pony, having to fork out another initial PCH payment for the next car)
And before I get accused of polluting the planet, how much pollution have I saved by putting a quarter of a million miles on the Alfa, rather than on three brand new cars over the same period?
Your last point is perfectly valid of course but, again, in order for you to have your old car, someone had to buy it new at one time. The ultimate solution to the problem of pollution caused by transport is of course to produce and use less cars, but that doesn't fit very well with economics, which is what is behind a lot environmental decisions in reality.
Edited by Jon_S_Rally on Wednesday 10th July 11:40
Ryvita said:
sgtBerbatov said:
This is the ideal car for herself in doors...
Are you ok dude? That's... emotionally dark. What did her indoors/Pedro do to you...?And Pedro didn't trim the grass with the toe nail scissors that I explcitly asked for.
Nigel_O said:
nuttywobbler said:
It's not £299 per month though, is it?
£4000 up front plus £299 per month (and that's for the base model!) for a car which will probably struggle to do 100 miles on a charge. No thanks!
Exactly - £4k up front equates to another £83pm over four years, so the true cost is already £382pm£4000 up front plus £299 per month (and that's for the base model!) for a car which will probably struggle to do 100 miles on a charge. No thanks!
My rattly old Alfa GT diesel cost £4k to buy and I get a month's commuting out of a tank. Even if the electricity was free for the Mini, the cost of the Mini is almost two and a half times the cost of running the Alfa over four years (and at the end of the four years I would still own a rattly old Alfa GT, whereas with the Mini, you're back on Shank's Pony, having to fork out another initial PCH payment for the next car)
And before I get accused of polluting the planet, how much pollution have I saved by putting a quarter of a million miles on the Alfa, rather than on three brand new cars over the same period?
Also what do you think they do with PCP cars after 3 years? They don't bin them and make a new one you know.
I like it, from what I've heard its actually cheaper than the petrol equivalent and for people like my Mrs who do 12 miles a week and have a driveway to charge on it's perfect.
I swear anything to do with electric cars has the luddites fuming.
This would probably be the ideal car for the Mrs when she comes to replace her existing Mini in a few years, he daily commute equates to about 12-15 miles depending on what visits she does at work, so I imagine she will be charging it once a week on average. I do have a driveway and means to fit a charger so no issues there and the real selling point is she loves Mini's despite there being "better" cars for less money in her eyes the Mini is the only car which has any sort of appeal so yeah I can see one appearing on our drive in the next few years.
Range isn't a huge issue for us as we will always have a large family car for that alongside whatever toy I choose for myself.
I'm not a huge EV fan personally but I do see the Mini will bring EV's to a far wider market.
Range isn't a huge issue for us as we will always have a large family car for that alongside whatever toy I choose for myself.
I'm not a huge EV fan personally but I do see the Mini will bring EV's to a far wider market.
charltjr said:
This is a new car, for people who want a new car, not a used car. Comparisons with used cars are futile, because people who are happy to have a used car will almost always get better value out of having a used car. That's not the point.
The point is that this is the first attainable big brand car that a lot of people will be familiar with and would want to own, so it will be really interesting to see how it does. It's a Mini, but it's electric. That will be very, very comforting for a lot of people as it's instantly familiar.
Petrolheads aren't the target, people like my wife with her petrol Cooper are. She doesn't really know anything about cars, but she knows what she likes and the Mini ticks all the boxes for her. She likes the idea of EVs generally but finds everything affordable which is currently on the market unappealing for one reason or another. The Zoe has a crap interior, the i3 "looks weird", etc, etc. Home charging an EV would be easy for us. She doesn't need a car which can do hundreds of miles more than once in a blue moon, and she can drive my car if she ever does need to do a long journey.
I think it'll sell by the bucket-load.
OK, so why do you think loads of people will spend 7 Grand more than a normal Cooper. With better residuals and none of the inconveniences of BEV ownership.The point is that this is the first attainable big brand car that a lot of people will be familiar with and would want to own, so it will be really interesting to see how it does. It's a Mini, but it's electric. That will be very, very comforting for a lot of people as it's instantly familiar.
Petrolheads aren't the target, people like my wife with her petrol Cooper are. She doesn't really know anything about cars, but she knows what she likes and the Mini ticks all the boxes for her. She likes the idea of EVs generally but finds everything affordable which is currently on the market unappealing for one reason or another. The Zoe has a crap interior, the i3 "looks weird", etc, etc. Home charging an EV would be easy for us. She doesn't need a car which can do hundreds of miles more than once in a blue moon, and she can drive my car if she ever does need to do a long journey.
I think it'll sell by the bucket-load.
Edited by charltjr on Wednesday 10th July 11:33
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