A Small Big Deal

Mini’s first production electric car could be its most significant product.

- Daryl Lee

So, here it is, then. The Mini Electric, or to give the car its full name, the Mini Cooper SE. This is the first fully electrified series production model by the British carmaker, and it’s just about the most important model to come from the brand since its modern revival at the turn of the new millennium under the auspices of its new Teutonic masters.

In case that above point wasn’t clear enough, let me say this now: the Mini Electric is a car that Mini absolutely needed to make, and it needed to make it yesterday. In case you haven’t heard, exceptionally tough environmental regulations are set to take hold from the end of this year.

If carmakers can’t bring their average fleet CO2 emissions under 95g/km, they’ll be facing a fine of €95 on every 1g/km. And that’s for each new car registered. Doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but some people did the math and reckoned that at today’s rates, the industry could be facing penalties of well over €30 billion. Annually. This gives you some idea as to why Mini, its parent company the BMW Group and pretty much any other carmaker out there are scrambling to put electric cars into production.

It’s a good thing, then, that the Mini Electric could be put into production in relatively short order, just two years after the concept car made its debut at the 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show.

The first electrified Mini takes its 184hp electric motor and battery technology from the BMW i3S, though with some mild modifications, mostly to make it fit in the Mini 3-Door’s engine bay, according to the car’s lead powertrain engineer, Michael Krauss.