Mini’s electric-drive ‘E’ (Mini E) is set for a UK trial which will start early in 2010, following similar efforts to test for real-world operating conditions in the US and Germany. Dave Leggett has driven one and considers some of the underlying issues facing electric vehicles.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
Numbers in the UK field trial for the Mini E will be small. Forty Mini Es will be made available for two trials of six months in duration – the second to commence in the second half of 2010.
Some 20 Mini Es in the trial will be with fleet users and a further 20 with private users who will have applied for the privilege. If they meet the Mini trial criteria – which covers things like committing to drive 300 miles a month, keep the car garaged and provide Mini with constant feedback – they will still have to pay a lease charge of GBP330 per month.
BMW/Mini maintains that the exercise is to be used in the engineering and infrastructure support of mass-produced electric vehicles and to establish the social and economic issues and aspects of running an electric car – vital preparatory groundwork needed before the higher volume ‘Megacity’ EV BMW Group sub-brand launches in the middle of the next decade.
So think of this as a kind of learning exercise for a future family of BMW sub-brand electric vehicles designed for eco-conscious urban dwellers prepared to pay a quality premium. The Mini E is the first product of BMW’s project i – a programme designed to research and develop transport strategies and new types of vehicles for sustainable mobility.
Is that really it? There won’t be a Mini E for sale based on this one that is being so extensively trialled then? After all that work to develop a vehicle suitable for real-world testing [1]? And what if the Mini E is a runaway success with the people who trial it? And surely, you might think, a few more Mini Es running around could only strengthen the BMW Group’s preferred association of ‘sustainability’ with premium as it readies its EV-city-car brand? You could at least carry on the process of familiarising the service workshops with the EV works.
The company line is firmly that there is no Mini E for series production in the pipeline. Okay, let’s leave it. We will simply look forward to the BMW ‘Reva plusses’ then…
It’s a Mini Jim, but not as we know it
During everyday usage, the Mini E can travel around 100-120 miles on a single charge, depending on driving style and conditions.
Power is produced by a front-mounted 150-kilowatt electric motor which generates the equivalent of 201 hp. The lithium-ion battery pack is rather bulky (and weighs 260kgs) and means that you both lose rear seats and that there is minimal luggage space at the rear. But given the range and nature of this vehicle, you probably wouldn’t chose it for a lengthy tour of Europe. And sticking that battery mass in the middle of the car is the best approach from a handling point of view (‘mid-engined’ handling).
Despite having to haul that weighty battery pack, the car is perky and can sprint from 0-62mph in just 8.5 seconds; it has an electronically-limited top speed of 95mph.
The Mini E can be recharged from empty in around four and a half hours via a dedicated 32 Amp charging point (‘wallbox’) which will be installed by energy provider Scottish and Southern Electric at the Mini E trial drivers’ homes. If you want to charge up at an ordinary 13 Amp socket, you’re looking at a ten hours charge time. As part of the trial a number of charging stations will be set up also within the trial area – a triangular area west of London (roughly Oxford-Andover-west London) where the cars will operate.
One interesting and innovative feature is the regenerative braking – which claws back the energy lost when the driver releases the accelerator – to extend the range by up to 20 percent. In practice it means that the ‘natural slowing’ when you take your foot off the accelerator is such that you rarely touch the brakes. It is much more progressive than ‘engine braking’ in an ICE car. We wondered about the danger of rear end shunts due to a lack of brake lights, though.
The UK Mini E ‘field trial’
The Mini E was initially made available under lease to selected private and corporate customers as part of a trial project in the US states of California, New York and New Jersey. The positive feedback from these first trials led to similar large-scale tests being introduced in Germany (early 2009) and now the UK – the three largest markets for Mini.
Starting this winter, Mini E models will be on UK roads for a twelve-month trial that will ‘evaluate the technical, behavioural and social aspects of living with an all-electric vehicle in the current environment’.
There are a number of participants besides BMW/Mini. The ‘Mini E Research Consortium’ was created to pull together experts from various fields: an energy infrastructure provider, an academic partner, a regional development agency and two local authorities.
Earlier this year the UK Government-backed Technology Strategy Board announced that the Mini E Research Consortium would be supported by a proportion of a GBP25m fund, which was made available to eight consortia from across the UK to accelerate the development of ‘desirable ultra-low carbon vehicles’.
The consortium includes Southern Electric (part of the Scottish and Southern Electric Energy Group) which will supply both the electricity and the electrical infrastructure, an academic partner (Oxford Brookes University’s Sustainable Vehicle Engineering Centre) and the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) as well as Oxford City Council and Oxfordshire County Council.
Southern Electric will be responsible for the domestic and public electric charging infrastructure in the research area which will be installed by its contracting division – Southern Electric Contracting. Green energy will be provided by Southern Electric by matching the electricity supplied to the Mini E through home recharging with electricity from its own hydro electric stations and wind farms.
The Mini E test area is determined by the region in which Southern Electric Power Distribution owns the electricity distribution network so that the load, time and duration of car charging can be monitored throughout the network.
Under the direction of Professor Allan Hutchinson – who leads the Sustainable Vehicle Engineering Centre – Oxford Brookes University will be responsible for undertaking scientific data analysis and conducting customer surveys to capture the subjective feedback from users of the Mini E test vehicles.
All of the vehicles in the Mini E project are supplied with data loggers, allowing real-time vehicle performance and driving styles to be tracked and compared.
Behavioural scientists from the School of Social Sciences and Law will select Mini E drivers through an online application process.
Some 20 Mini E vehicles will be distributed among the Mini E consortium members for testing in a fleet environment – an element in the UK trialling not seen elsewhere.
Private drivers wanting to take part in the field trial were invited to apply online in September. From over 500 qualifying applicants, 20 will be selected to take part.
Each Mini E will be leased for six months from winter this year. A second round of applications will then be invited mid-2010, allowing a further twenty drivers to lease a car for six months.
The ‘lucky’ drivers will be paying handsomely for the privilege of driving a Mini E. Mini says that accounting for current development and manufacturing costs, the monthly lease fee for a Mini E would normally be priced at GBP550 per month. Yikes. However, thanks to part funding from the Government Technology Strategy Board, the monthly lease fee will be reduced to GBP330 per month. That figure includes VAT, insurance and maintenance.
Mini says that fully recharging the battery using off-peak electricity at current prices will cost around GBP1.50. Using higher-rate daytime electricity, the cost will still be less than GBP4.00, it says. The dedicated 240V/32 Amp charging point includes a 6.5m charging cable. An adaptor for use with an ordinary 13 Amp socket is also supplied to drivers.
Maintenance, servicing and technical assistance will be provided by dedicated BMW Group UK ‘flying doctors’. These technicians are supported by selected Mini E Dealers within the Mini E research area and the ‘service hub’ at Plant Oxford, England where all Minis are currently manufactured.
The Mini E decals should get you noticed. Depicting a stylized power plug in the shape of an “E” set against a silver background, the Mini E logo has been applied to the roof, bonnet, tailgate and the charger port flap on the rear panel.
Oh, and you can only have your Mini E in left-hand-drive, as BMW says the business case didn’t support making low volume RHD versions.
Which way does the OEM jump on range anxiety?
Driving a fully electric car brings a new set of considerations to the driver. On the Mini E a rev counter is replaced by a dial that tells you about the percentage of charge left in the battery. If that percentage gets too low, there’s the knowledge that you won’t simply be rocking up at the nearest petrol station. You won’t be playing the ‘how near to empty am I?’ game because you will need to give due consideration to where you will be recharging and for how long (32A or 13A?). That brings to aspects of the electric car sharply into focus: battery charging infrastructure and consumer attitudes.
BMW’s trial will probably find that the ‘early adopter’ enthusiasts who are prepared to pay GBP330 a month to belong to such a trial are highly adaptable creatures who can make their lifestyles fit the car’s operating boundaries. If they need to visit their Auntie Pam who lives in the north of England, they may well have another car suitable for long journeys or be well aware of the alternative mode options for the journey. Mini E usage will be geared to shortish journeys and a regular pattern of charging. There is ostensibly nothing wrong with that – typical daily commutes are within the Mini E’s range. If you can top-up the battery charge while you are at work, even better.
But where does ‘range anxiety’ really kick in? There are the ‘what if’ scenarios. What if you get called out of the office for an unexpected journey to a place that is 70 miles away? What if you get stuck in gridlock and the heater is working overtime? What if there are road works and a diversion that takes you off your planned route? At what point do you start fretting over the battery charge – when it is at 20%, 30% or even 40%? And there are many buyers who want a car that can handle long journeys as well as short ones (and with more seating/luggage space).
But these are the kinds of questions BMW wants the trials to shed more light on.
One fix for ‘range anxiety’ is the GM Volt/Ampera ‘range extender’ solution. You have an on-board petrol engine that can charge the battery and therefore dramatically increase range and remove the worry of the battery limitations. Conventional hybrids are another way to go of course.
Much depends on the future rate of progress in improving the performance of batteries (and reducing their mass/size). It is still early days and there remain big question-marks over battery charging infrastructure and incentives that will be needed to encourage market take-up and the manufacture of costly electric drive vehicles. There is a lot to work out and that probably explains why the Mini E is being viewed by BMW as – first and foremost – an experiment.
But don’t be too surprised if BMW/Mini decides that the success of this particular experiment in hitting a well-heeled and eco-sensitive urban niche warrants bringing a Mini E to the market at some point in the future.
[1] BMW says the Mini E has ‘already gone through the major phases of product development for mass-produced vehicles and passed numerous crash tests on the way’. Aspects investigated besides passenger protection were the impact of collision forces on the lithium-ion battery and finding a non-hazardous location for it in the car.
Production of the approximately 500 cars took place at the company’s Oxford and Munich sites. The Oxford plant was responsible for manufacturing the entire vehicle with the exception of the drive components and the lithium-ion battery. The Minis were transferred from Oxford to a specially equipped manufacturing complex in Munich where the electric motor, battery units, performance electronics and transmission were integrated.
See also: COMMENT: Ghosn’s range anxiety gamble
FEATURE: Driving the electric future
