Sovereign Mini Bloemfontein was kind enough to lend me the Mini SE for the weekend. 

Some pics:

Charging in my driveway. 

Pretty normal Mini Cooper interior apart from the special SE "wrap" on the dash. 

Driver cluster shows the electric usage and re-gen. 

 

a R650k electric car. Almost 200k more expensive than the Ice equivalent. Is it worth it. As so many reviews have stated... No it is not. If you charge only from solar the ROI is 42 years at R20/L. Okay so this will come down as fuel prices increase but still a very long term "investment". 

But is it worth it if you have the coin and want to use it for urban env only? Then yes, very much. I was able to drive it from the morning 7h30 till the evening 19h30 on a single charge. Managed 190km with some highway, some property viewing. Bought some plants at the nursery and they fitted in the rather small boot. In urban settings, the car excels and if money was no object I'd prefer this to the bigger EVs from BMW, Jaguar and Merc. Audi seems to have some cool fun cars upcoming in the very near future. 

The Mini is in its 3rd year but is still a conversion rather than a bespoke developed platform. This will change in late 2023/2024 I understand. 

Fun factor: The Mini SE is the purest form of fun I've driven. I lived with an 06 Megane F1 2.0T for 7 years and that was a fun car. The mini takes it to a whole new level. The 135kw instant power made Golf 7 GTi look slow from the line. 

The regenerative braking makes driving the car a breeze, at first you let go too much and get a lot of negative acceleration but as you learn you feather the throttle pedal to get smooth braking. 

187km of range sounds very low/short but I was gatvol at the end of the day trying to empty the battery. 

Will it work in current Config as a direct replacement of your Ice car? No, the range is not enough especially on open road to get to nearest charger eg. Gariep from Bloemfontein. As a urban car it's epic and could provide commuting for a week on a single charge. If you have solar it would take around 1.5days to fully charge on solar only using the 3kw charger included on a 5kw PV array. Eskom is still cheap but charging at a fast charger station can cost up to R5.50 a kW. You do the math. 

Although the mini only has a 32kwh battery of which 28kwh is usable, it results in overnight 100% charging or Saturday Sunday charging on Solar from even below 50%.

Cons:

The one I drove has no cooling seats but has the leather seats. The seats get so hot when parked in the sun that the aircon (which is amazing) cannot cool your back and you arrive at destination with a sweaty wet back. Not cool tbh. 

Being a conversion the dash and interior has not been remodeled to make use of extra space like no exhaust tunnel underneath the car so you still have that tunnel in the car. Removing this in the next model will make the mini much more spacious. I could not complain about the current space for the driver though. Felt great to me but I'm short at 174cm. Rear seats are for short people or younglings only apart from the odd "must transport friends" scenario. 

Was able to fit months groceries from Makro into the car but only after folding down the rear seats. 

If your keen on electric mobility, do yourself a favour and get a taste by test driving the Mini Cooper Se. 

 

Edited February 10, 20223 yr by JoeSlow
Spelling

Awesome!!

Thank you @JoeSlow , nice write-up, and great pics. What charging apparatus did you use? I have been eyeing the Sunsynk charger for domestic use, they appear to have have three: two for commercial use (22K 3 phase and 7K single phase) and one 7K for domestic use.

 

Not that I have an electric car yet, but I do forsee it in the future, and as you know with gadgets, it's always good to put the cart before the horse 😆

 

Edited February 11, 20223 yr by YellowTapemeasure

@YellowTapemeasure thanks for the kind words.

You get the 3kw normal 3prong plug charger with the car as well as a open on both sides wire and plugs for use on certain charging stations. The Jaguar station I went to has 60kw output on direct dc charging. Those plugs that don't have the two direct DC connectors charge through the cars inverter as I understand. 

I just used the home charger cause it was sufficient to fill the battery in 4hours when on 50%.

 

Those sunsynks look nice

4 hours ago, JoeSlow said:

@YellowTapemeasure thanks for the kind words.

You get the 3kw normal 3prong plug charger with the car as well as a open on both sides wire and plugs for use on certain charging stations. The Jaguar station I went to has 60kw output on direct dc charging. Those plugs that don't have the two direct DC connectors charge through the cars inverter as I understand. 

I just used the home charger cause it was sufficient to fill the battery in 4hours when on 50%.

 

Those sunsynks look nice

Ah, thanks! That explains, the relatively thin yellow charging cable.

Sooo.... Currently spec'cing out a Mini Cooper SE and will be putting down the deposit in the next week or two to have it built a super my requirements. 

I ran a million scenarios of numbers, watched countless YouTube videos. Looked at upcoming evs in SA etc. 

The Mini just looks like the car to get for the next 5 years when a worthy upgrade will be available at the same price point. Then it can go to the wife for a town car and I can get the family ev. 

One thing I'd like to know/get info on. Say the gov starts giving incentives to ev buyers in the next two years. Would I be able to claim tax return on it or only in the same year its bought as the year of the tax filing cycle? 

Trying to keep that open if it could net me a few thousand Mandelas in return. 

 

 

On 2022/02/23 at 9:22 PM, JoeSlow said:

Say the gov starts giving incentives to ev buyers in the next two years.

Good luck on that dream 🤣

More likely they will try finding a way to move the petrol fuel taxes onto ev recharging.

Bi-Directional car chargers are here, they just need to come down in price. 

Using variable power cost rates Eskom could incentivise people to use their vehicles to feed back power into the grid when demand is high and charge their batteries when demand is low.

Being able to make money from your car's battery while it is sitting in your driveway would  be a big win 🙂  

Just being able to use the power stored in my car's battery to power my house at night would be a big selling benefit to me. 

 

My Mini Cooper SE arrived in Bloemfontein on Wednesday evening!

Wad PDI'd on Thursday 31 March and took delivery the same day.

Part of a special Mini SA was running a got a free level two charger. 7.2kw/h which I connected to the grid part of my solar system so CT coil can still allow PV to be used on the charger. I can set the car to slow charge then its 3.2kw/h.

Pics:

 

Wow, well done for taking the plunge. This is my dream as well, but a couple of things need to happen for me. #1 car needs to feed back to the house so the battery pack is dual use - this makes the purchase much easier to justify (a portable battery bank). #2 - SA gov to stop penalising and start encouraging purchase of these vehicles.

First big road trip done.

Af far as I can tell form the petrol attendants and the EV SA Facebook group, I am the first person to drive from Bloemfontein to Cape Town in a Mini Cooper Electric.

Round trip driving and charging took about 16 hours per 1000km and trip was done from Thursday 5pm and arrived back on Sunday 9AM.  So around 64 hours from departure to arrival and total Km's of 2200km traveled. 

 

 

 

 

Bit tired here. Had 4km to go to reach home at this stage: 

 

51 minutes ago, JoeSlow said:

Round trip driving and charging took about 16 hours per 1000km and trip was done from Thursday 5pm and arrived back on Sunday 9AM.  So around 64 hours from departure to arrival and total Km's of 2200km traveled. 

How many stops were required? Where did you stop? Did you have to pre-plan the stops? How long per stop? Did you stick to the limits or cane it?

 

10 minutes ago, Bobster said:

How many stops were required? Where did you stop? Did you have to pre-plan the stops? How long per stop? Did you stick to the limits or cane it?

 

Hi Bob,

Did a speed of 90km/h GPS. Reason is the Mini only has 29kwh (32kwh gross) usable battery so did my research to find the best range speed.

From Bfn I stopped to charge in Colesberg, Richmond, Beaufort West, Laingsburg and final charge in Worcester. Each 180km+ stint I charged for an hour to get to 100% but the stints less than that only 45 minutes which yields around 90ish %.

I have a web app from GridCars which shows all the chargers and if they are online, in-use etc. You can check it out: https://www.chargestations.co.za/CP/Index.aspx 

The Mini was not made for long trips but I just needed to do it so when my brother said he needs to collect a Jeep in CT I decided to prove it.

Cost of 2000km plus the odd 150km travelled in CT worked out to R1650 for charging on the GridCars network. It's not cheap at R5.88 a KWH but the fast charging at 50kwh is convenient and you pay for that convenience I guess.

All in all fun drive, was dog tired afterwards but I know I can at least do it if I need or want to. 

Well your earlier posts made the valid point that these cars are really designed for suburban use. They're not so good for the sort of long trip we do in South Africa. 

9 minutes ago, JoeSlow said:

I have a web app from GridCars which shows all the chargers and if they are online, in-use etc. You can check it out: https://www.chargestations.co.za/CP/Index.aspx 

That's incomplete. It doesn't show the charging station in Petrus Steyn. I saw it with my own eyes. I was so surprised I took a photo of it.

Thanks for all the info.

 

Lately I think these vehicles make more and more sense for my household...  or households such as mine.

Consider this:

• We have two vehicles.  Both ice.
• Thanks to covid changing the world, both the wife and I work from home now.  Zero daily commute to work.
• We are lucky enough to have the school in our neighborhood, literally 300m from our house.   The SPAR is 500m.
• A good estimate would be that 90% of our driving is school run and shops - everything so close.
• I don't think - for daily commute type stuff - we do more than one or two short trips per day.

 

Unless I'm missing some critical detail, it would make sense for us to change one of two vehicles for full electric (not hybrid).

For holidays, weekend trips or any other occasional longer driving, there is still one proper diesel powered SUV.

What I don't know is life expectancy of batteries and costs related to that.  This could become a deep rabbit hole.

Thanks again for the info!

1 hour ago, Bobster said:

That's incomplete. It doesn't show the charging station in Petrus Steyn. I saw it with my own eyes. I was so surprised I took a photo of it.

Ah okay but was it also a GridCars unit? If so please send me a Google maps location so I can ask them to add it

21 hours ago, JoeSlow said:

Cost of 2000km plus the odd 150km travelled in CT worked out to R1650 for charging on the GridCars network. It's not cheap at R5.88 a KWH but the fast charging at 50kwh is convenient and you pay for that convenience I guess.

I know it is a small car and should be light but that doesn't sound bad?

2150km/R1650 = R1.30 per km

How far does a ICE mini drive with R1650?

6 hours ago, McGuywer said:

I know it is a small car and should be light but that doesn't sound bad?

2150km/R1650 = R1.30 per km

How far does a ICE mini drive with R1650?

It would have cost me R3718 with my old 1. 6 16Valve Megane mk2 for the same distance at an average of 13.3km/l

Here's averages for the ice mini cooper 2021 model. 

Good morning,

We recently acquired a Mini Cooper SE (had it for about two weeks) and will be attempting our first "long" trip from Randburg to Crystal Springs this weekend.

With range anxiety, I think the most daunting stretch would be the Pretoria -> Alzu stretch. It seems that the only charger in between is located at Emalahleni and its at a dealership, so no access after hours.

Will advise how and/or if it went after the weekend.

Also trying out "A better Route Planner" to assist with routes. It is quite configurable, vehicle additional weight. From planning a to and from trip on different plans, it also seems to take elevation into account as the same route gives different total trip time.

Thanks Joe Slow for the tips!

Edited June 13, 2024Jun 13 by doodsangel

On 2022/04/26 at 1:44 PM, McGuywer said:

I know it is a small car and should be light but that doesn't sound bad?

2150km/R1650 = R1.30 per km

How far does a ICE mini drive with R1650?

Don't know your math, but... if you want R/km, then you need to say R 1650 / 2150 km and end up with cents/km, not what you ended up with which really is 1.3km / R...

2 hours ago, Kalahari Meerkat said:

Don't know your math, but... if you want R/km, then you need to say R 1650 / 2150 km and end up with cents/km, not what you ended up with which really is 1.3km / R...

Well spotted. At the time the cost for the 2150km was 77c/km.

At the time of the post 04-2022 my Freelander cost R1.39/km for fuel home-work-home. 

Edited June 13, 2024Jun 13 by Scorp007