 Mini E electric car. Click image to enlarge |
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Mini E
Richmond Hill, Ontario – My Mini was fuelling up when I arrived at BMW’s head office for a test drive. Eager to be on my way, I performed the rest of the operation myself: I unplugged it and neatly wrapped up the cord.
My ride was the Mini E, an all-electric version of the iconic British vehicle. It’s experimental, but it’s not a one-off concept; it was one of 450 that were leased to customers in New York, New Jersey and California to use as regular cars, providing feedback to BMW on the experience. The project is now wrapping up. This particular tester had come off a lease in New Jersey, and had almost 18,000 kilometres on the clock.
No more Mini E models are planned, as the little coupe has fulfilled its duties as part of a multi-stage program. Next up will be the Concept ActiveE, initially shown at last January’s Detroit Auto Show, based on a 1 Series coupe. It will also go into limited use, but will pave the way for the MegaCity, an all-electric urban vehicle scheduled to arrive in 2013 as a regular model in the BMW line-up. Unlike the Mini E and ActiveE, the MegaCity is penned from scratch, and won’t simply be an electric version of any existing model. Since weight is the enemy in an electric vehicle, it will also make extensive use of carbon fibre, which will be the next huge step in BMW’s electric strategy.
  Mini E electric car. Click image to enlarge |
The company has a long history of experimenting with electric and hybrid vehicles, beginning in 1972 with a model that had several lead-acid batteries stuffed under its hood. While minor improvements are always ongoing, automakers pretty much nailed the electric car back in the earliest days of self-propelled vehicles, when these simple-to-use cars outnumbered the cantankerous, hard-to-start gasoline versions. The major stumbling block has always been the batteries, which have never kept pace. It has only been in the last few years, with the introduction of lithium-ion cells, that electric cars finally show promise as viable vehicles.
The Mini E uses them, stacked between the front seats and a small rear cargo area, making the car strictly a two-seater. On the ActiveE and MegaCity, they’ll be sandwiched under the floor, allowing four-passenger seating and a trunk. The Mini E also uses “Super Caps,” special capacitors that store extra energy and release it when a blast of power is required, such as on hard acceleration.
Other than the carpeted riser behind the seat, lack of a tailpipe, and a power indicator in place of a tachometer, the Mini E wouldn’t look any different than a conventional model if its name wasn’t plastered across its doors. Starting it is the same as with gasoline – insert the key and push the start button – except that only the gauges come alive. The shift lever looks and works the same as a conventional automatic one; according to BMW, it’s attached to a manual transmission with a single fixed gear powered by the electric motor. Like a regular stick-shift vehicle, the car will roll backwards on a hill if you take your foot off the brake.
  Mini E electric car. Click image to enlarge |
If your opinion of electric cars is that they’re glorified golf carts, that idea goes out the window the moment you press the accelerator. It’s rated at 201 horsepower, more than the 181 horses in the turbocharged Cooper S. The Cooper S makes 177 lb-ft of torque to the Mini E’s 162 lb-ft, but where a gasoline engine has to rev up to reach its maximum torque, an electric motor provides full twist the moment it starts to spin. At 1,660 kg, the Mini E has an additional 55 kilos over the automatic-equipped Cooper S, and so its acceleration times are slower: zero to 100 km/h takes 7.2 seconds with gasoline, and 8.5 seconds with battery. Still, 8.5 seconds is certainly no golf cart, and on an empty stretch of highway, I tapped the Mini E up to a speed I won’t reveal, except to say that it would have gotten me into some serious trouble had the local lawmakers been watching. Battery-powered cars still have major hurdles, but from the driving perspective, they are viable vehicles.
