🚙 One Month Owning Our Mini Cooper SE Electric Car - Review And Cost To Charge 

May I ask what are the letters on your plate? GVD? Jus wondering what are the combo now.

Thank you. You'll get it just in time for the good weather.

I’m very interested in an electric pick up. Not a lot of choice unfortunately.

Chaos is my middle name, and sometimes my first name.

Yes, that reversing bleeper needs to take some vallium.

Yes, things are a wee bit different over here, lol.

I think you'll love it. Let me know how you get on.

I really Mini hit the ball out the park, and at just the right time.

If you’re only doing City driving why not use the bus, train, bike, e scooter, walk?

@@BobK5 Because I choose to.

@@YNGSTUD78 yes I understand that, it does appear though to be rather ironic or juxtaposed in the buying of an EV in order to save the planet by ditching fossil fuel vehicles only to drive them around a city that has inbuilt transport systems making the concept of the city car as outdated as the very gasoline engines they’re supposed to be replacing, (ignoring the fact that the electricity has to be produced by the fossil fuels we’re supposed to be casting into obscurity.)

We had to wait a month to get our charger. It makes a huge difference. Are you going to wire it up yourself?

@@ScottRods an electrician/friend will be doing the work. Will do that soon to prepare for the car delivery.

Wow that’s a long wait!

Yes, you're probably right. I'm used to it now.

Yes, so annoying copying ideas from automatic cars instead of thinking outside the box and going to push lever forward for forward and back for reverse. Mind you, having driven an automatic car for 100k miles never had a situation of accidently pulling gearstick the wrong way...

Have you driven one yet?

@@ScottRods No I haven't. but my cousin has a Mini Hatch and I always thought it was a nice car, I prefer smaller cars.

Thanks for your support my friend.

Hey, nothing wrong with taking your time and doing your research. New electric cars are coming onto the market every day.

@@ScottRods so true the market is changing so fast 😶

wow, that's a long time waiting. Where are you?

@@ScottRods I'm in California. they told me it's a 90 day wait. So I'm about to sell my Prius and start the new year right.

@@aericklondon3750 Awesome, I'm excited for you. Check back in when you get it, or make a wee video for us all.

@@ScottRods Hey! Just got my 2022 Cooper SE first of the year. Loving the drive. It's so fun. Haven't tried home charging yet but tonight might be it. and looking into level 2 charger but it has to be hardwired to get the rebate.

@@aericklondon3750 Congrats! What do you mean by hard-wired? Are they not all like that. Or do you mean you have to pay a fortune for some "official install" which means the rebate just covers the damage, lol. Anyway, enjoy your new toy.

Seriously? Tell me more.

I’ve still not read the instructions lol.

We bought this car as a local daily commute, so the range has never been an issue, but yes, a longer range version would vastly improve this wee car.

@@ScottRods I live in Sydney Australia. If I want to visit my parents about 85km away then I can't make a round trip on one charge. There would be no public chargers along the way or near where they live. Perhaps in a couple of years, either Mini will have a longer range or the availability of public chargers will be better.

@@simongross3122 One day when I'm rich and famous I'd like to get an electric truck, like the f150 Lightning or chevy silverado E. They have tons of range, but also tons of cost, lol.

I think the solution here would be to have a "drop in" second battery as a range booster (for an extra fee). For longer trips, you could drop it in the hatch and plug it in. When not needed, leave it in the garage on a special shelf built into the charger. This way, you'd not be carrying the extra weight every trip. Ultimately, the drop in concept could be standardized and instead of stopping at a gas station for a petrol fill up, you could stop by for a booster battery swap.

I think it is important to have the 2 markets and have cars with less range like the mini. The advantage is that the car is much lighter, which is more fun and cheaper to run. On the issues I've got with mine (Europe 2021): the driver seat is not electric and because both me and my wife constantly swap, she pump the seat up and forward and me the opposite. The other thing is the light indicator, it is a pain to switch off if it did not trigger to go off due to the curve of the road. And the last thing is Apple Car play is buggy, but this is probably an Apple thing. Apart from that, I completly agree, it is a fantasatic car. The rare times I take the diesel (because of the range or if we are the 4 of us in the same car), I feel like I'm on a noisy, smely vibrating and slow tractor. The Mini SE feels like an agile space ship in comparison.

We kept our snow tires and wheels from our last Mini Cooper S. Congrats on your new toy.

hahaha, nag circuit. Reminds me of my mum in the passenger seat years ago.

@@ScottRods Haha when airbags first came into common use, I used to say that the passenger-side airbags were there for the passenger-side windbags :)

I suspect you had a Prius. The beeping (in the Prius) is to remind the driver the car is in reverse as the "gear selector" is more like a manual stick shifter. In a stick shift, the "up" position is typically first gear, whereas this position is reverse for the Prius. For folks who have never driven a stick, the beeping makes no sense to them.

Seriously? Did they remove the saltire from the sunroof?

I’m doing a 6 month review soon. I’m from Glasgow Scotland. Thanks for dropping by.

The front are built into the headlight and come on automatically with the lights however the rear are manual and the button is to the side of the headlight switches

On any other EV yes, but not with the Mini. They took away that complexity by only allowing 80 percent charge, although it shows 100 when "fully" charged. Pretty smart. They also recommend always charging it, so as you say, don't let it run down too low.

The battery in the mini comes with an 8 year warranty. I guess the are hopeful it will last that long 😁

The first Bolt was released in 2017. There has been insufficient time to substantiate your claim.

@@davidbutt406 maybe the volt? It was Scotty Kilmer who talked about that.

Don't tell the people in charge of the electric grid, lol.

We got 5K off. I think Doug Ford has removed the rebate because we are all millionaires, apparently.

mine was ordered middle of June and I got october 1st. so it took about 3.5 months. delivery was quicker too because i'm in the UK where they're made.

We bought him off the lot. We were very lucky to get pretty exactly what I’d have specced anyway without the wait.

I was the first 2022 SE delivered where I live. I ordered 1/6/21 and it took 101 days to my driveway. However, the popularity of the SE appears to be going up, so delivery times are also going up.

Oof, here I am late to the game. Ordered mine a few weeks ago. Guess I've gotta prepare for some waiting.

We calculated the range drop to be about 25% in winter. But we are are talking deep snow and minus 25 degrees for a few months. Totally acceptable figures for us.

@@ScottRods ahh okay! Thank you, mate. That’s certainly manageable! All the best for the future and thank you for responding so quickly!

I think they both drive it in Mid, or whatever mode comes on when you jump in and go. Personally I'm a "Sport" kinda guy, but after the police incident, I try not to drive it much, lol.

@@ScottRods 🤣Thank you, that helps. I'm going to try it on Mid my next ride out... maybe even sport 😁

We are getting close to a year of ownership. Never had to use a public charger.

Best thing we ever did. If you want to chat in detail, send me an email or friend me on Facebook. I'm like a "Move To Canada" salesman.... or person, or whatever.

It's my wife's app, so I'll need to ask her. But basically you input the cost per KWH, for peak/mid peak/and off peak.

Charging history, click on a session then total cost and you can then edit to add kwh rates for the address the charging was at. It will use that for future sessions at this address.

Mini thought of that. The brakes come on when you use regen.

Thanks Mike, but apparently BMW have thought about that on the Mini. When the charge says 100 percent, it's not actually 100 percent, it's lower, so we don't have that degradation issue. Pretty sneaky, but if it works, it works.

@@ScottRods very sneaky indeed!

Yeah, we’re used to it now.

No, this charger box is just an unnecessary show piece. It has no function other than on and off. Charging times etc are controlled with an app.

With the lower range on the SE, Mini designed the battery to be charged to 100% as often as needed. So telling it to only charge to 80% is not needed, if that is one of the things you were referring to. The built in buffer is around 8% at the top and 4% at the bottom. The US warranty is 30% degradation over 8 years / 100,000 miles.

@@minise-focus oh. Is that right. Yeah. I just think that i need to treat it like my iPhobe

I installed a 50 amp charger with a 60 amp fuse on a 220 line.

@@ScottRods Any items after fuse should be rated same or higher. EV charging is continuous high power for a long time. Think you said charger max was 32amp, so I would drop fuse size. Check manufacturer recommended fuse size for charger. UK electrician our industrial socket get down rated around 60% continuous use. If outlet gets warm each use connections will get worse with time.

Sounds about right.

At 32 amps, you would be using a 240 volt circuit, so about 7 kW.

The manufacturers could put in an inertia switch to trigger the brake light

@@craighough5886 or program the ECU to turn on the brake lights when in regen mode

The mini brake lights come on when you regen. I'll do a video on it.

@@ScottRods That's good news!

@clockwatcher the Volvos also light up the brake lights when regen is going. I think most manufacturers have figured it out by now, but you are correct - they sure didn’t in the beginning!

Yes, you're right. I'm very used to having a nice driveway and garage here in Canada. In Scotland I had a small single driveway and crappy wee sectional garage, but most folk don't have a driveway, never mind a garage. So you will be more reliant on charging away from home.

Everyone who has done a range test has shown the 110 miles is greatly under estimating the range. We get about 150 on average.

Our Mini was similar in price to a new Mini JCW.

I was..... 9 years ago, lol.

Battery is BMW and has an 8 year warranty. Battery technology is changing quickly, so if we still have the car by that time, we might be changing it to a non lithium battery, which seems to be the future of batteries. We're not worried.

Hi Scott... just heard that a new Full Electric 2024 MCS will be out soon, and will have a range of 400km... isnt that great or what? Its also gonna have a new display filled with lots of gimmicks :-)@@ScottRods

Because it's not a Mini, lol

@@ScottRods one could argue...... Neither is the mini sE 😁. Had 2 i3s and really enjoyed them, Hope you enjoy yours

Maybe with a Bimmercode software program, but there's no switch if that's what you mean.

Not everyone in the planet is used to automatic cars. 99 percent of The UK and most of Europe learns and drives a manual car, where 1st gear is forward. Just sayin.

Forward to go forward and back to go backward is the most logical and safest way to do it. The arrival of the elecrric car would have been a perfect time to change the old method. The fact that they haven't changed it is proof that it will never be changed.

We've not really put it to the test yet. But we didn't buy it for road trips, I have the truck for that.....until we get an electric truck hehehe

In cool to hot weather (not cold), you can expect to average somewhere around 128 miles (206 km) on a full battery. In cold weather that will go down a bit. My best trip in 6 months of ownership is 145 miles. (Mostly mountainous back roads on that trip)

What are Matrix lights?