MINI Cooper Hardtop 2-Door SE – Review, Specs, Pricing, Features, Videos and More

MINI went electric a few years ago with the Cooper 2-Door SE. The all electric MINI offers minimal range and is intended as more of a commuter than a longer distance driver. But the Cooper SE does feature on thing most EVs do not – that fun to drive factor.

With 181 hp on tap and nearly 200 lb-ft. of torque, this car is plenty fast enough in a straight line. But what’s surprising is the fact it retains MINI’s iconic reflexes in spite of a massive weight gain.

Hey! The internet loves short, nuanceless interpretations of big thoughts and in that spirit here’s my review of the 2021 MINI EV: It doesn’t have enough range.

With about 110 miles of EPA range (I saw more like 100 miles, but I never drove it down to 0) it probably comes up just short of making sense for a good portion of the population. I still like it, though, and if you like the regular MINI this almost the exact same except it’s better in a lot of ways. Except for that one.

But let’s allow a little more nuance. (Stupid word counts).

As someone who has had the opportunity to spend a week at a time in a few EVs, I think my job has given me access to exactly the information that the battery electric vehicle market is struggling to get to buyers. Basically, spending a week in an EV really proves to you that range anxiety isn’t as important as you might think. The simple fact of the matter is that by changing my habits exactly not at all, I never ran the Mini’s battery down lower than 90%. And as soon as I got close to that, I plugged it into a regular old wall socket, went to bed, and woke up to a fully charged car.

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Let’s take a trip back to 1999 for a moment.

GM reveals an upgraded version of its EV1 using NiMH batteries, which can now travel 105 miles (169 kilometers) on a single charge.

It’s not the first electric vehicle to exist by a long shot, but EV tech has come a long way in the 22 years since.

Fast forward to 2021 and we have Lucid making cars that’ll go a claimed 520 miles (837 km) in one shot. At the other end of the range spectrum though, there are cars like the Mazda MX-30 and Mini Cooper SE with a driving range in the mid 100s. The usual marketing spiel claims those of us that live in big, congested cities don’t need a long range anyway, since all we’re doing is going to work and picking up groceries from up the street. In that scenario, smaller batteries attached to smaller price tags make a ton of sense for the urban dweller, so these city runabouts should be plenty useful.

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