2009 Mini E: Open Thread

hardtech:

You will never see this car in Texas, it's a prototype "mule" for a 2013 all electric BMW. BMW chose the MINI platform because they could easily incorporate the batteries and the electric drive system. This car, as well as most current ones will have a difficult time in areas like you are describing, where 100 mile one-way trips are common, but there are plenty on people that don't drive nearly that far any given day. You even said you have a 40 mile one way commute to work and that's about how far my work is and I've been using my MINI-E every day since I got it in June. I drive it about 120 miles a day (75 miles to and from work & ~40 miles during the day at work) I am able to charge up for a while before I drive home so that's why I can do the extra miles.
You were asking about the warning system as compared to your G8, here's how it goes:

When your state of charge gets down to 30% you get an audible alert and a yellow battery warning icon temporarily on the charge display in the center of the instrument gauge.

When your state of charge goes down to 10% you get another audible alert and another yellow battery warning icon, this time the icon stays there and your charge % remains highlighted on the gauge cluster as is goes down to 0%.

Once at 0% the car seems to find a reserve of about 5% and the charge meter actually goes up for a few miles before back down to 0%

Now that the meter is really flatlined you can drive about 20 miles before you will just run out. These last 20 miles or so you will not have full power and can drive about 45mph max, and that will get lower the further you drive. After about 15 miles of driving in these conditions you get a final audible chime and another icon(like a cog) which I have only seen once. This tells you that you only have a couple miles to go and also reduces power so you can only drive about 10mph.

Of all the 450 people in the program, MINI recently reported that only 2 have completely run out of juice and needed to be towed. In the beginning I "tried" to run out and kept driving around my block a bunch of times when the charge meter hit 0%. I didn't know just how far it could drive after it hits zero. The Edmunds staff seems afraid to push the car like the people in the program do so they really aren't learning the limit.

Donna: Charge the car to 100% and just drive until you need to call a tow truck. Write about it. That would make a great entry.

Tom M
MINI-E #250
@17,500 miles

Donna:

If you do take me up on the idea, don't do it on a track please. Drive it around like you would normally. Drive in traffic, on the highway, stop for lunch, dinner, whatever and give us the entire route. A lot of people seem to ask about running out of juice. How far can you go, what happens, what warnings..etc. If you do this, reset all the gauges when you start (ah/100 & average speed) and give us all the numbers.

Tom M
MINI-E #250
http://minie250.blogspot.com/

Donna, if you do take tomm up on his suggestion please do it on a track. I would hate to see you get rear ended because you can't exceed 10 mph for the last few miles. Being Cali it could be even worse than a bashed hatchback.

"Have you driven one? Ridden in one? Seen any on the road?"

No. I live in the frigid north where such a vehcile is useless.

Ship that thing to Fargo for the winter so we can see how bad it really is.

Hey brn, just because you are miserable in Fargo, doesn't mean the Mini should be. :)

Yes it does. :)

Btw: I'm not actually in Fargo (too damn windy). I just think it'd be a good place for a winter test.

I want to hear about how much longer before you get rid of the thing. Tired of the science experiment already.

"Have you driven one? Ridden in one? Seen any on the road?"

No, no and no.

I don't think they sold any of them in Canada. Too bad, a Canadian winter would be a real test.

What kind of HVAC system does that car have -- the automotive equivalent of a heat pump? How well does it work?

cwc1:
The a/c works really good. It can cool the small cabin in no time at all even on really hot days. It really doesn't use much power either. I found it would use about 5-7% battery charge every hour of use.
The heater is another story. The one good thing about it is that it starts blowing hot air almost instantly as it doesn't rely on waste heat from the motor like conventional cars do. However, on really cold days (under 20F) it works just well enough to pass. The cabin is comfortable, but definitely not hot. Also, there are 4 fan speeds and if you urn it up to the highest speed, the air starts blowing cooler. I think the fan moves too much air across the heating element so it overpowers it. As long as you use fan speeds 1 through 3 this doesn't happen. Also, the heater uses a lot of energy. I have found that constantly running the heater on the second fan setting uses about 12-15% battery charge per hour.

Tom M
MINI-E #250
http://minie250.blogspot.com/