Mini Electric Costs £10K More Than Petrol–And Has An Effective Range Of 100 Miles
November 5, 2023
By Paul Homewood
I don’t use Facebook much, but am always astonished to see how many adverts for EVs appear.
Are companies so desperate to sell them, or is this the Nudge Unit at work again?
Anyway, it’s a good opportunity to check out prices again.
The cheapest Mini EV comes in at £32,550:
Meanwhile the equivalent petrol model costs £22935, almost £10k cheaper:
The specs of the two cars are similar.
The range of the EV is given as 140 miles, which means less than 100 in reality, making it utterly useless for anything other than round town.
No wonder Mini are so desperate to advertise them on Facebook!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
If you have searched facebook for the information contained in this post it should be no surprise that you are condemned to endless adverts to buy them. I never have and receive no such adverts but I do have plantar fasciitis and have searched for relevant footware. I am unable to escape endless adverts for corrective shoes…
I was told to roll a golf ball under the foot as a way of massaging it. Problem is, it turned out to be gout. Oh well.
I thought I had gout and it turned out to be oedema. Oh, well…
How many feet do they think you have? Same as Amazon – buy something and they email you adverts for what you have just bought. Even if it was a consumable you would hardly be wanting more right away.
Seriously, I wouldn’t accept an EV if it was offered to me for free.
Can you pass the free EV on to me please?
Please make sure it is one I can sell or that ! could use as a house battery for when the power goes out this winter.
Even driving round town using regenerative braking I’d have do a full recharge every third day for the school run for grandchildren. Currently it’s every three weeks or so. Admittedly it’s probably an above average school run.
But that is about an hour a week on a commercial charger, judging by the Geoff Buys Cars video, compared to 10 minutes every three weeks.
In terms of lost hours of potential endeavour an hour spent drinking coffee and looking at the shape of prawn cocktail crisps (watch the MacMaster video) is a huge loss to the National GDP. Not everyone in a car will be working from “home”
House insurers are slipping in no fire cover for EVs charging within 15M of houses??? Overheard in the pub, but it would not surprise me!
Quite right too – insurance is all about risk.
The real reason for Government’s push for evs is firstly to restrict personal transport (and hence individual freedom) through expensive ev prices and secondly to grab money from us in the form of £15,000/car charges on ices sold beyond the quota, which starts next year at 80% and decreases to zero by 2030.
‘Savvy OLED display’ How sad that one of the main selling points for a car is not it’s ultimate practicality but that it has a posh dashboard display!!
That equates to approximately 61000 miles of petrol to achieve cost equivalence before depreciation and other factors are taken in to account
The original Mini was a great car, I had two, which I should have kept.
An early one with starter button on the floor, cord pull door handles, sliding windows, gear lever a yard long and huge door pockets?
I had them great vehicles apart from where the Coil and distributor were placed
I was away with my thoughts then G. Mine was green with a white roof. Wish I still had it.
Mine was green with a black roof, the bodywork was in the Mini Cooper S. The previous owner had blown the engine and it had been replaced by the standard 850. I gracefully declined all quick starts from traffic lights as the engine I had couldn’t pull skin off a rice pudding. Returning to the UK in the late 70s I bought a Wood Pickett Cooper conversion and that was something else
I had a two 850s and minivan. The saloon was a brilliant, I went round what’s now the NC500 in one of them, using an old AA manual as an atlas The other saloon was from about 1960 and fell victim to rust in the end. .
” An early one with …. ”
A mid-1960s Minivan, standard except for rear side windows. Followed by a late-1960s saloon in purple metalflake paint, 1100cc engine, double valve spring head, big-bore exhaust, Cooper wheels etc.
Memories, memories!! There was a moulded piece of (?) plastic you could screw into the back of the grill which covered the top of the coil, and that made all the difference. I was posted overseas by my company in June 1970 and was wondering about selling it. My problem was solved by someone ploughing into the back of my car while I was signalling to turn right off the A3 in Hinchley Wood. The right off money was very timely 🤗
‘making it utterly useless for anything other than round town’
That describes all EVs to me. It should be noted, though, EVs are very useful around town.
I need to ask my Model 3 owner friend how far away from home he would drive it. He took a road trip (~500 miles) a couple of years ago, and swears he’d never do it again. app directions to chargers in strange places that didn’t work. ARGH!!!
In the summer I saw a French registered Tesla parked in a charging space at a hotel in Menorca. Surely, the defintion of travelling in hope?!
I loved my Mini 850, great fun to drive, but it had its faults, the gearbox was like stirring porridge, hills meant changing down, there was no room under the bonnet, fixing the fanbelt meant taking the grill off, and the battery fell through the boot floor. Still loved it.
This new Mini EV looks like very bad value for money, much better to spend a few grand more and get a Tesla or consider leasing the BYD Dolphin from Octopus Energy with free charging for the length of the lease.
” great fun to drive ” . One of my Minis could get the speedo needle round to the fuel gauge.
Yes, they used to do that, my mate’s did.
When he fitted a tacho we noticed that at 5,700 RPM valve bounce set in, the RPM remained constant and the speedo continued to climb till it reached the fuel gauge!
‘The range of the EV is given as 140 miles, which means less than 100 in reality’
Even less. Devoncamel introduces “anxiety threshold” in another thread. It will always be lower than physical capability. So Mini is down to 60-80 usable miles.
Anxiety threshold for ICE cars is so low, anxiety over finding a restroom will be greater.
So as James ‘Captain Slow’ May said in a series he did on cars, the range of a battery powered car has not improved since they were discarded in favour of petrol power. Even steam power would probably be better – you can always find a bit of wood along your route.
Over 200 years since Trevithick constructed and built an operational steam car.
I saw a traction engine holding up traffic today, the emissions smelt of nostalgia.
After your loving government bans petrol cars, they will ban EVs. The objective is to take your freedom of movement. You regress to electrics, then you will be forced even further back . . . to steamers.
Weldy
Friends have an older Mini and live 60 miles away with a dozen hills and valleys in between. With this EV, they likely could make the trip to here but would need a charge to leave. That’s not a good idea. 🙂
Under different circumstances . . . never mind.
Never buy anything from anyone who says “savvy”.
I think I may have said this before but in the late 1970’s the gov department I did my apprenticeship with( which was very good) investigated the possiblity of EV’s for use in London, it was little better than milk float technology back then and wasn’t progressed with. I do recall being told that new battery tech ‘was just around the corner’ and that would change things…………….
Yes, a neighbour of mine had one, she got rid of it as she was constantly concerned that the 35 mile trip to a friend, with about 25 of that on the A1, would mean she’d run out of juice before getting back home.
My slightly elderly Mercedes E-class estate cost £3,000 second hand, I’ve spent about £1,000 or so on a good service, tyres and suspension joints, now it goes, steers and stops like a new car, body is just short of immaculate, it is as smooth and comfortable as you would expect of an executive class Merc, complete with satnav and carphone facility, and if I put my foot down there’s around 440 foot pounds of torque available throughout the rev band so it goes like stink.
It does 40MPG on a good day and has a 18 gallon tank.
EV’s? Pah!
As an American saloon car racer once said “There ain’t no substitute for cubic inches”
I think the original phrase was “There’s no replacement for displacement”….
;¬)
I stand corrected, thank you.
. . . and we don’t know what saloon cars are.
English saloon = American sedan. “Two counties separated by a common language “!
“There ain’t no substitoot for cubes” is I believe the original!
🤣🤣
I have never seen satnav on a car or motorcycle that was anywhere near as good as plain old Google Maps on a smart phone. I don’t know how dealers can sell it.
Actually, it was part of a package on my Shelby. I didn’t pay for it directly, but, yeah, I paid for it.
It was offered on my BMW motorrad. I said, “Show me.” It was junk. For hundreds of dollars. I laughed at them.
The satnav is original equipment and hence is built in to the centre console, along with the mobile phone integration that accepts my trusty vintage Nokia 3210, referred to as the AK47 of mobile phones.
It integrates with the Blaupunkt sound system and even shows traffic congestion and produces audible reports on the subject.
Once the destination has been entered it is integrated with the steering wheel centre controls and tells me when to turn off etc.
I have an iPad too with Google Maps should I want to use it, but that means having it in the front of the car and taking my eyes off the road and hands off the wheel.
I haven’t got a “smart phone”, I class them along with “smart meters” and “smart motorways”!
Shelbys are great, I had a couple of ordinary Mustangs a long time ago, favourite was a 289 Notchback, great fun, sweet car.
A 350ci I had was a brute, lethal in the wet, if you went somewhere and it rained it was safest to leave it and go home on the bus!
I had a Chevy pickup too, back in the 1970s when such things were rare in the UK, driving round with Don McClean’s “American Pie” on the stereo was a real head-turner.
A friend of mine who works in the automotive industry once told me that the new “Mini” is just BMW taking the piss out of the British.
Having now returned to driving a MINI, the quality is BMW like, not BMC like
Essential Viewing from 28th October if not already seen. Select Committee on Energy Security Enquiry now available on BBC iplayer. Link here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001sfbg/select-committees-energy-security-inquiry
The three witnesses from the Renewable Sector seem at sea half the time, with an inability to supply really convincing analysis or data to back up their generalisations.
Ok if you are rich and only use it as a second car for popping out to the shops, but what a waste of money and resources. BMW jumping on the band wagon.
In ten years time, when the bottom has fallen out of the Ev fad, and when you can pick up one for a few hundred … but can’t drive it unless you can afford the 1000s … or with inflation 10s of 1000s of insurance. Would it be possible to retrofit lead acid batteries and create a nice little runaround useful to get around town or go to the supermarket … obviously no long journeys, as you’d be daft to use them for that. But if you don’t have to pay much for the car, and can get lead acid, and you don’t want much luggage and you don’t need to go far, they might have a place?
Fit an ICE engine + generator to power the electric motor(s)
NiFe cells are superior in many respects to either lead-acid or Li.
https://www.nickel-iron-battery.com/
Greatly underestimated IMO.
Mini Van 8879PF, TWO mini Coopers, the first 997 16 VYC, Red with BLack Roof, from Coopers in Surbiton SH, then TMG 479F, a similarly 2 year old 998 Cooper, white with black roof. Drove them all over Europe, 3.000 miles in 3 weeks every summer. Hence my bad back now? The Van’s first trip was Naples in 1963… When married my wife had a standard 850 CTR 883C which had interesting rust to patch, swivel joints to fix, (remember shimming the suspension joints?) Still have my Wanner 7,000 psi grease gun, etc. I did all the servicing and repairs, modern cars are boring. Setting up the twin SUs was not for people with bad backs….. changing the tiny hose between head and block was interesting but doable. New rubbers in the drive shafts and fixing the useless manifold bracket underneath the twin carbs Remote gear shift of Coopers was a great improvement, as were replacement steel 4.5J rims and Dunlop SP Radials, and you could buy a fancy dash with the instruments in front of you if you wanted. I recall it needed twin spots to see anything at night? Seat belts optional.
At least us of a certain age can look back with nostalgia at better times, youngsters today not so much.
Nostalgia’s not what it used to be!
” Drove them all over Europe ” There are still owners of proper Minis who drive their Minis to Turin in October, not me though 😦
Always next year!
“Better things are Electric”….”not quite, Mr Johnson”
Turin? What’s the Rally called? “The real Italian Job?”
Pics of a couple of my bikes towards the end of this piece, I still have the Douglas, along with a Red Hunter and a Goldie:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/notes-from-the-sticks-action-stations/
People aren’t fooled any more, they know E.V’s are fake and expensive, and after 8-10 years replacing the battery costs more than the car is worth.
The second hand market is collapsing, Ford G.M. are both ceasing production, and have over 90,000 units they can’t sell. And we haven’t even talked about the fire risk, (2 container ships lost and two major car park fires) let alone half the UK insurers either won’t insure them or want up wards of £5,000 a year!
So much for the “Green electric future”..
Of course theyâre nonsense. Apart from anything else, where are the supply points? And if there were enough, and all useable (which I gather they often arenât) where is the electricity supply coming from? And after say 70,000 miles they will have no resale value as the cost of replacing the battery will be more than the car is worth. Then thereâs the weight, liability to catch fire, insurer reluctance, and lithium mining in virtual slave conditions in China and Africa.
And all in the name of non-existent global warming.
If the government were really serious, they would have prioritised RR SNRs with which RR have 50 years of experience instead of farting around for alternatives.
Iâm 86, our very reliable little car is nearly twenty years old, done 70,000 miles, and Iâll probably never need another one. If I did it certainly wouldnât be electric.
Hybrids are OK-a friend had one ten or more years ago. They make sense, if CO2 worries you.
Ian Harris