Mini E (2008) electric CAR review: the battery-powered Mini

as BMW don't have a small double-floor A series (thank God) where they could have perhaps hidden the power pack, this is the best BMW-start as a test bed. The future of Urban transport isn't gong to be Dodge Durango with 750kg batteries slapped between the chassis rails, it's going to be Mini sized or thereabouts. Packaging even the new batteries remains a nightmare at present, so the trick with the cabrio would have been a very british 'sideways'-solution to the current Mini E's layout. Tailhappy, too! As for the day to day costs, so long as Gordon and his mates don't put black boxes into electric cars, or car-only electricity meters and pricing, they're going to find it hard to charge excise duty for the electricity being used. Did that electron flow through a light bulb or the Mini? That saving, is I daresay only gong to be available until E cars are finally viable. At exactly that point, the treasury'll need to make good its petrol losses and will stiff us all, >>>whatever<<< we are driving. It's called road pricing, and the technology exists already, sadly.

I find it quite extraordinary that some of you guys think that losing the back seats out of a Mini isn't an issue.Tell that to all the school run mums that i see every morninng, especially now that the school run 4x4 is becoming so publicly unpopular.We run a small,ladies 2nd car and the missus would quite like to run something like an mx5 or Mr2 but losing the occasional two rear seats makes no practical sense, especially if a school friend is part of the journey home.Missus hopes in the future for a TT but it has to be the coupe.The mini has been considered but she isn't a fan of it but it does in its current format suit the mums perfectly.It would be ideal if it was Electric, butin its current form. ....The real world.

Supercar - what's "weak" about my arguments? As Lokinen (good post) points out BMW have had quite long enough dragging this EV project along. My criticism BMW have destroyed the Issignosis MINI's primary object of seating four is perfectly sound. Lokinens' great idea of hiding the batteries bulk in the cabrio seems far smarter than BMW's shot-in-the-foot. My post is less opinion and in fact all questions regards the smoke-screen put up around every EV vehicle that avoids a real world comparison. I fail to see how anyone can argue I've a weak argument when, like me, you've got no real data to go on!