Sneak Peek: Mini E Electric Car

While other well-known automakers are developing plug-in electric and fuel-cell cars, BMW is making its own alternative fuel move by rolling out a fully electric, battery-powered Mini Cooper for lease to select customers in California, New York, and New Jersey. (Honda has a 200-unit lease program underway for its FCX Clarity fuel-cell-powered sedan.)

A large, 35 kilowatt-hour, lithium-ion battery pack takes up the whole back seat, making this Mini E strictly a two-seater. (That’s no great loss, as the Mini’s back seat has limited room for passengers’ legs anyway.) The battery is made up of 5,088 individual lithium-ion cells. The company claims a 150-mile range on a full charge, but in press photos the range indicator shows just 83 miles on a full charge. (While this may be a remnant of acceleration testing, we note that in practice electric cars often don’t attain their claimed electric ranges in real-world driving.)

Mini is including a quick charger with every electric car, but it has to be installed in lessees’ garages. The company says this special wall unit will charge the car in 2.5 hours, though the Mini E can also be recharged from a common 110-volt power outlet.

The Mini E uses a 204-horsepower direct-current electric motor and a single-speed gearbox. Torque is rated at 162 lb.-ft. Mini claims the Mini E will accelerate from 0 to 62 mph in 8.5 seconds, notably quicker than the base Mini Cooper we recently tested.

The Mini E is electronically limited to a top speed of 95 mph. The front-wheel-drive Mini E weighs 3,230 pounds, about 700 pounds more than a base Mini. The suspension has been fortified to account for the added weight and its distribution.

Interestingly, the Mini E will be the first all-electric car on the market with electronic stability control.

Mini says it will lease 500 of them, for a one-year term at a time. No word on how much those leases will cost, however, or what options are available to lessees at the end of the term. Mini will be looking for feedback on how lessees use the cars to gather data for future electric-car development programs.

Read more about electric cars. And join the discussion on our hybrids and alternative fuels forum.

—Eric Evarts

Comments

[Andrew]

A step toward the right direction.

[melville248]

Thank you Mini!Wish I could be a part of this pilot program. Hopefully these cars will be successful and available to all soon.

[Daniel]

£554 per month to lease AND you have to service it every 6 months you self ! I'll wait till the price comes down.

[Stephanie]

Purely electric cars aren't really feasible for people living in a city without a garage...when is there going to be a Mini-hybrid?

[Joe R]

I wonder if this is like the lease program GM did in california, as soon as they had the law changed to where they did not have to manufacture electric cars, they canceled the leases, and took all the cars back, and had them destroyed. to learn more watch 'Who killed the electric car?'If they aren't selling it, they aren't committed,and when you get done you have nothing.I would want to own it so I could modify it, to my own needs. Maybe improve it, Like putting solar cells all over the roof to charge it while I am parked, then i won't need an outlet to charge it. I work for eight hours, my car is going nowhere, I am in no hurry, why not let the sun charge it?