This Car Changed My Perspective! - Electric Mini Cooper SE
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2022-05-05
·
2,112 words · ~10 min read
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- [Alexander Clark] Interesting week to be doing an EV review. It was what like 43 degrees here this week,
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living in BC, set Canada's temperature record three days in a row and then burned to the ground.
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Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm pretty over the temperatures, which is why we need good Ev's,
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And man, we've got one here today. I'm kind of shocked to say it. Honestly.
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It's the mini EV and I really like it. Let's have a look.
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This is more of an old stock EV. It wasn't built from the ground up with electrification in mind.
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We don't get a frunk. Instead we get a big 'ole battery management system.
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Oh, it just comes up. It's this right here. If we pulled off the, you know,
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pedestrian protector, it looks basically like an engine, but instead of fuel rails,
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it's these high electricity lines. Pretty cool, but also like it has its problems.
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They claim 180 kilometers of range. It's more like 150.
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I thought it would be a deal breaker, but in practice, it's not as bad-- more on that later though.
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One second. This is really hard to get back on.
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The look overall is, well, it's a mini. You either love them or hate them.
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It's got this nice little bubbly headlights, kinda looks like a fish, maybe a carp or something up here.
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It's cute. I like it. Is it $40,000 nice looking? Maybe not.
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But I guess that is what you get when it's an electric car. Around, you've got like, you know,
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these nice little mirrors and over here, come on, Andy. Pretty much everything also looks standard,
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except here you have a plug instead of a normal gas cap. Here, you have support for up to 50 kilowatt,
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fast charging, which given the size of the battery in this thing is really fast.
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And around back, you have those nice union Jack tail lights and that's about it.
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Oh yes. And EV plug logo.
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It is called a mini and it's certainly lives up to that name with the amount of space you have in the trunk.
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So you can fit what, maybe two, two fours in here.
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If you're going into the cabin with your buddies, not that you can make it to your cabin with the range on this thing, but you know,
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then you lift this up and you have a nice little charging table,
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and quite a bit of space below that. I almost regret that at this point in the review,
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I normally get in the back seat 'cause that's going to be, you don't want to use the back seats in this thing.
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That is for, do I even try Andy?
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If I'm honest, this isn't as bad as I expected.
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The seats feel nice. There's not a lot of room, if you're over about
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four and a half feet tall, you're gonna really struggle sitting back here.
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But that's fine. I wouldn't expect you to be in there more than like,
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well, never, if you own this thing.
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Getting in the driver's seat though, it's, it's a bit of a mixed bag.
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The seats, I really like, even though they are cloth,
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they're not all leather. And there's no like electronic adjustments.
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I don't really care. They're comfortable seats. In here, there's some hard plastics, but overall,
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the bits that you actually touch are very nice. Like the center console is squishy, right over here
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it's squishy and goes all the way back. So your elbow, no matter where it is, is comfy.
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This one has the piano black package which is,
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$400 for whatever reason. Don't get it. It's terrible. It looks great for about a day,
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and then someone does... That. And you have a fingerprint
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for the next six years. It's terrible. Especially these buttons here for the 2021 one,
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they were like, yeah, we have these nice new piano black steering wheel buttons that are,
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yeah, it looks terrible after you touch it once.
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Manufacturers, no piano black, please just, ugh.
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Now it is pretty clear that the last big generation leap for the mini was in 2014.
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They have had two facelifts since then, but this really does not feel like a car from 2021,
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but that's not necessarily a bad thing. You have these super tactile hilt buttons
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for every single thing that you want to do. It's just so satisfying to use them like
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this switch for the sun visor. It's just, I would believe that cherry made this switch.
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It's just so great and like hard buttons for every single thing, you have this little knob down here
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that lets you go through all of the different screens on this.
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So you have touchscreen and the knob, both of them kind of suck,
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but together after using it for a couple of days, you sort of figure out where each one works kinda well
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and using this infotainment, it's shockingly good.
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It looks terrible. It's just one of the most putrid looking
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satin apps that I've seen in quite a while, but it does the job.
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I would rather use this than what's in the Porsche. One thing that's kind of cool that Andy just told me is that
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if you zoom out on the map, it shows you your range in the car.
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So apparently we can get to Whistler right now.
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I would not try that, but apparently you could.
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I quite enjoy that when you move the steering wheel,
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the little display, it moves with the steering wheel.
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So no matter what you do, you don't have to worry about not being able to see it.
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That was a huge problem in the Taycan. Another fun little thing you have to sun visors, I guess?
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Can this one just not go? Oh. That one goes-- Sure.
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Cool. Let's drive it.
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In here we have got my absolute favorite thing, adaptive dampers. So I just put them on soft as they can go.
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We've got a speed bump here.
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Speed bumps still aren't amazing. You can't overcome that with a wheel base that's this short,
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but on the road, it's really good. I quite like the suspension.
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Now it is slightly annoying that you can't tune the dampers and the steering
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and the throttle input differently. I do wish that there was individual setting,
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but for the most part, I just set it to mid mode or sport and call it a day.
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Actually, we've got a corner here.
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This thing is hilarious. It is legitimately one of the
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most fun cars I've ever driven. So you have this fantastic steering,
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especially in sport mode where it just tightens everything up a bit.
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And although it's not fast, it is exceptionally quick. Like just,
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it feels like you have little like two cylinder turbo
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engine that's always making its maximum boost. It's great.
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It gives you this nice, fine control to just sort of tuck it into a corner.
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This is without a doubt the perfect, being a dick hole in traffic car,
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because you have that instant torque and also pretty excellent sight lines all around you
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and an incredibly small car, especially with the BMW turn signal that doesn't
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actually click all the way over. If there's 1.2 car lengths between the people in the lane
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beside you, you can make it into that spot. You are such an asshole traffic in this thing,
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and it is fantastic. If you're just going nice and slow and then you hit it,
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you get like a tiny bit of torque steer. This thing's just fun to drive.
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They really delivered on that.
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Now the range, you only get like 150 kilometers.
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They advertise 180, but then you have to use green mode, which makes the steering bad
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and the damping settings bad and the throttle response bad.
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So it's not a fun car anymore. So just don't use it.
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Now even though like the Taycan had 300, 400 kilometers of range, and this only has 150,
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my range anxiety was a lot less than this because the
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battery is small and pretty efficient, so you're not using a whole lot of electricity,
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but you can just plug it in pretty much anywhere, not have to worry about how fast it is
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and not at all long after you have a good bit of charge.
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Cars like this will make a lot more sense for a lot more people as chargers
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just get installed everywhere. I would really not hate never having
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to go to a gas station again. But then we come to the most brutal part of this car
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and that is the price. So this one right here as spec'd is 46,000 Canadian dollars.
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You are not getting $46,000 worth of car here.
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Like you saw the interior, you've seen the ride quality.
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It's not super fast. That's like A-class money.
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That's Golf R money. You can very easily tell that this is a $20,000 car,
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with $20,000 worth of battery and motors jammed into it.
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That said, in BC, you might be able to make a case for it.
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If I was to charge us at my house on my normal commute, it would cost me between five and $10
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a week to keep it charged. Given, I'm normally spending about $70 per week
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to get to and from work. That's pretty freaking sick, especially given that,
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you know, all our power is done through Hydro. This is incredibly clean.
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So I guess how much it makes sense, kind of depends on where you live.
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Like yeah, sure. It is a lot of fun, but I could have this car with $20,000 in my pocket,
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if I just got the gas version. If you don't have a charger at your house
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and you don't have another car and you don't live somewhere where the government gives you good kickbacks,
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it's really hard to recommend this thing.
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Now, will we be getting EVs as fun as this in the future?
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I actually don't know. It's clear that it can be done,
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but at the same time, this is a 1400 kilogram car.
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And that definitely adds to the feeling of engagement where you're going around corners.
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In theory, you can have a lot of fun with an electric car that has
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about the amount of horsepower a normal person could have. You know, this has 200 foot pounds of torque,
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200 horsepower. That's what you're going to get when EV's start becoming mass market.
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You're not going to have 500 horsepower like a Taycan. I guess, mission complete. EVs can be fun.
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And I really hope that more fun ones come out in the future.
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Also massive shout out to Mini Langley and open road for giving this to us.
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I was able to drive it for a week which, was invaluable because,
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I really hated it for the first day. And then I got to actually use it and be like, okay, kinda fine, actually.
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So yeah, I hope that you guys liked this video. Hit like, get subscribed.
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Have a fantastic day. Let us know in the comments how we can make these better
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in the future. So long. Oh wait, you guys probably thought that I was going without
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It's awesome. Here's some Crab Rave for ya. Have a good day.