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Homing in on the range

Published on 21 June, 2020

TURNING HEADS: The electric Mini

Overview

I wanted to love the electric Mini that I had recently. I have doted on the brand for most of my life, ever since a friend's father had one of the first in the late 1950s. On the emotional side, my real first love (and consequent betrayal) was based around one a decade later.

But, perhaps more importantly, I have enjoyed driving the Mini through all its changes and developments as it turned from a pretty flimsy tiny box on wheels into the premium marque of today.

The designers, from the great initial inventor Sir Alec Issigonis to Frank Stephenson at BMW 20 years ago and his heirs, have ensured that the go-kart feel has always been kept. It never fails to bring a smile to my face and a lot of memories.

The new e-Mini has exactly the same size and look as the normal three-door Mini Hatch and I saw this for myself last year when visiting the BMW/Mini works in Cowley in the English midlands and met Dundalk-man James Redmond who was the product integration engineer on the Mini BEV project.

The batteries are in the floorpan so as not to interfere with boot or passenger space. That said, the space in the rear is tight and difficult to access. Getting our two dogs in and out was tough enough. Adults and babies would be a no-go, but nimble children might make it.

The two-tier luggage space, even with the seats up, was good, although there wasn't a spare and much of the bottom area was taken up with charging leads.

Up front it is a different proposition, the car is easy to access, the seats were extremely supportive - although my wife found the material pretty rough on her legs - and there is an array of smart displays and entertainment choices, most of it centred on the dinner-plate screen which harks back to the original Mini speedometer.

You always drive a Mini as if you are having fun. It is amazingly responsive and needs your attention the whole time but the result is motoring as it should be - fast but safe. The electric Mini has quite a harsh ride, probably as a result of the weight of the batteries but strangely it does add to the excitement.

As you can see, it looks the part and really turns heads. Or it might have been one large white-haired man, with an over-large smile on his face, at the wheel… that's when he wasn't going through gyrations trying to clip the dogs into their harnesses.

While the price of the electric Mini starts at €27,764 on the road, after €10,000 of grants and rebates are factored in, very few Mini owners are not lured by the extras list and the test car had a spec which put it into a ridiculous stratosphere of nearly €45,000.

As a toy for the very rich that would be fine, for the ordinary punter it is stupid. However, for around €2,500 on the entry price you can get a nice Level 2 package and the Level 3 package at €35,445 gives you everything you want.

But there is one thing that no extra money or different level will give you - and that is extra range from the 32kwh battery.

While the Mini Electric claims it can have a range of 270km; even when I fully charged it twice, it showed just more than 160km - and that started to go very fast if you weren't using the regenerating power of the brakes around town.

However, it will power up very quickly at a fast-charging station or over a number of hours home charging through either a wall-box or three-pin plug. That's all very well - but this is a car for the open road and not just an urban runabout, and 160km is very low compared with the new small EVs coming from Renault, Peugeot and Opel. It is also a long, long way from the high 400km of the Kia Niro and Hyundai Kona - and, of course, the Tesla Model 3 Series, whose sales are going through a massive boom, both here and abroad.

A couple of years on, when our charging network is better it would be fine, but if I was living in Donegal or Kerry the car wouldn't be a runner, which is a pity.

There will be a bigger battery pack eventually housed in the four-door versions which will do the trick; but, for the moment, the electric Mini is not for me. It's a lot of fun - but not practical in many ways.

*******

Talking of Donegal, we are off to the county in three weeks or so for a few days at Rathmullan House Hotel. It will be the most motoring I have done for quite a while. On the way up we will divert to Dooey so that we can take a picture of our rescue dog on the beach with which she shares a name.

We had her and our Jack Russell, Ziggy, on a beach last Sunday for the first time since the lockdown started. They just loved it and we can't wait to see them race down together to the sands at Rathmullan.

My son Marcus, who lives in London, had a lovely present for Father's Day delivered to me and it whetted our appetite for going north to the Forgotten County. It was a hamper of wine, sauces, cheese, snacks and oil made up by Nancy's Bar in Ardara.

Pride of place was given to a selection of beers from the Kinnegar brewery, founded up the road from our holiday hotel. I will be toasting him with a can of Scraggy Bay this afternoon.