If Mr. Kerouac was right and the road is life, then the Mini E is heartbreak. The 3250-pound electric car goes limp after just 100 miles, and it will go only that far if you drive it sparingly. That’s almost (but not quite) the distance from one end of Los Angeles County to the other.
If you live in the Midwest, the Mini E will never see the oceans. If you live in Albuquerque, it’ll never leave New Mexico. If you live in New York City, it’ll expire just shy of Long Island’s eastern tip. It can’t roam the “raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge” as other cars can whenever their owners feel their inner Kerouac coming on.
Sure, you can recharge it. Figure three hours with the included 240-volt/48-amp lightning box that must be specially wired into your garage. Or 24 hours on a regular 110-volt/12-amp wall plug. You’ll want to stay close to home.
The one-year-lease contract at the stupefying sum of $850 per month (insurance included) is just a “pilot project,” according to the car’s maker. After the year, all these electric Minis must be returned. In the scant few hours we were given to suck the marrow out of a Mini E, we tried to simulate the likely owner experience with an eclectic if rather localized round of errand running. Stuffed kudu heads, anyone?
A Mini E starts life as a standard Mini at the company’s plant in Oxford, England. From there, it’s shipped, sans engine, to proprietor BMW’s headquarters in Munich, Germany, where this ride is pimped with a 201-hp AC electric motor, a DC-to-AC converter, an onboard recharger, and power-control electronics located in the gold-anodized box you see upon opening the hood. All of it is air-cooled.
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