2022 MINI Cooper SE Hardtop 2 Door
Hey guys today we’re driving the 2022 mini cooper electric this starts at under thirty thousand dollars it has a hundred and ten miles of electric driving range it’s front wheel drive we’ve got a funky cool looking interior kind of this greenish yellowish theme a beautiful red exterior let’s walk you around this new mini cooper electric show you what it looks
Like inside out we’ll take it for a drive and give you guys some thoughts on what it’s been like to live with this week so pretty fun little electric car it’s got a decent amount of power it’s got 181 horsepower from a 32.6 kilowatt hour battery pack and um yeah let’s walk outside and show you what this thing looks like got some funky noises on startup the
Outside pretty much just looks like your standard mini cooper we’re on winter tires today you’ve got this little electric mini logo on the back a yellow s logo next to the cooper here’s your charge port there you go you’ve got 50 kilowatt dc fast charging capability nice looking mini cooper i love the size of these things they’re fun to drive these new minis
Are super refined they ride well they handle great they have pretty good nvh over bumps got a little bit of trunk space back here there’s our standard charge cable that you just plug into your garage i’ve been charging this all week on my 240 plug in the garage and it’s been charging up very quickly get to zero to full battery in just a few hours yeah i mean
Not much to say on the outside it looks pretty familiar let’s see what’s under the hood i assume just a bunch of uh wires and electric bits yeah nothing special here just uh a big motor not a lot of room in this mini for uh extra stuff see the back seats got a little bit of room back there got your isofix child seat latches though i imagine they’d be pretty
Hard to access little cup holders i’ve had a bunch of mini coopers this last year and i do enjoy driving them they’re kind of still one of the most fun front-wheel drive cars to get in and drive looks like it’s turned off on us while we were walking around it’s okay we get to hear the startup sequence one more time automatic climate control with auto fan speed
This has a signature plus package for four thousand dollars that includes upgraded harmony card and sound system better infotainment navigation carplay compatibility the sunroofs all that good stuff we’ll open those up get a little bit more light in the cabin i like these sport seats they look pretty nice this cloth with leather and contrast stitching is really
Sharp got a little place to put the your phone in here with some looks like a plaid little grippy rubber area armrest flips up too you’ve got your usb port down there a little cigarette lighter port and apple carplay connects wirelessly too which is great this is a touch screen and you have this little scroll wheel down here to control things seems like a
Pretty responsive screen love the contrast love the display sound system sounds good we’ve got simple controls on the steering wheel here nothing fancy this little gauge here which is matte looks pretty sharp you got your power meter over here and your state of charge on the right side we’re at 93 percent charge it’s cold out today only 17 degrees fahrenheit
So it’s giving us an estimated range of 65 miles which is not that great but in the real world depending on how you drive should get that if not a little bit more there’s your reverse camera here it makes a slight noise let’s turn auto fan speed off when you’re reversing just to kind of give pedestrians outside the vehicle an idea that you’re moving there’s a
Speaker on the front of the vehicle speaker in the rear of the vehicle just a subtle electric car driving noise which i kind of like we have a control down here to adjust our regenerative breaking off throttle so there’s a setting for a low regenerative braking which is pretty much off and uses the brake pads the car defaults to high regen when you start it up
I found that to be a pretty nice drive mode you do have a couple different drive modes sport mid green and green plus mostly i’ve just been living it on the balanced mid setting this week and it’s been pretty fun to drive takes a little time for the battery to warm up and give you full power you can see it’s kind of limiting our output right now regenerative
Braking though is super strong from a start from a cold start so to speak so that’s nice you could pretty much use the regen for all of your stops unless if you need a panic break or you come in a little bit too hot into a corner which happens power delivery in this mini is pretty smooth it kind of blends onto the power slowly it’s not all immediate all at
Once and i like that sometimes i would rather have a smoother electric car than something that is immediately responsive and too abrupt handling is pretty good too we are on winter tires today so we’re not going to be getting the full grip experience but stability control is a little bit intrusive at the limit but for the most part this is a still a really
Fun chassis i don’t feel that much extra weight from the battery an electric motor up front compared to a standard mini the ride quality is fantastic the nvh is actually pretty good too 75 miles an hour not a ton of wind noise i like my driving position ride quality is nice not too stiff mini’s really done a great job refining their cars this is something you
Could easily daily drive usually taking a long trip and it wouldn’t beat you up nice visibility all throughout too waiting for the battery to warm up just a little bit so we can get some more acceleration out of this thing we’ve got a sport mode that gives us a little bit more power on throttle initially makes your acceleration curve a little bit less linear and
More aggressive on tip-in we are limited to i believe 95 96 miles per hour top speed that comes up a little bit quicker than you would expect in this car it is fun having that immediate power off the line as far as front wheel drive electric cars go this is definitely one of my favorite the power is balanced it puts it down really well it’s not just spinning
One tire out of every single corner and this being a mini the chassis is fantastic it feels just a little bit more solid a little bit more weighted around corners which i think is kind of nice there is a lot of understeer there we go now batteries warming up a little bit get a bit more power out of this thing brake pedal fuel is nice i mean really this just
Drives like a normal mini cooper s but it’s electric all right we have full electric power now maximum torque it’s been so cold this morning this is really the first time this happened i was driving this around earlier this week about 25 30 degree temperatures and it wasn’t throttling my power at all on startup yeah sport mode it’s pretty responsive pretty
Immediate with traction off it definitely gives you a little bit of wheel spin but not terrible i’ve seen worse there we go that’s more like it actually pretty quick until you get up to speed around town this is just a blast to drive one complaint though i keep finding myself inadvertently setting the cruise control to resume which is kind of dangerous when
I’m around corners my inside of my palm will hit this button and uh resume my cruise control which is a little bit disconcerting i’ll also turn up my volume but that’s a little bit less of a concern all right so how can we sum up this mini cooper se electric well i think you’re gonna know if a vehicle with this amount of range is gonna work with your lifestyle
Or not this would make an excellent second car and make a fun little in town run about i think the range is decent for a day’s worth of errands or half a day’s worth of errands here and there ultimately though um it still falls quite a bit short than a lot of the competition with you know two three hundred miles of range these days it is really fun to drive it’s
Super nimble i love the chassis i love the nvh i love the way this thing is to live with there’s not a lot of compromises here and uh this is one of my more enjoyable and more favorite front-wheel drive electric cars to drive i’ve always thought that you know the nissan leaf the chevy volt they’re good but they’re a little bit the bolt is a little bit too much
Of a burnout machine same with the hyundai’s and the nissan leaf is just a little bit dull and boring this kind of takes it all blends it together and makes a nice exciting comfortable fun to drive package that is stylish and cool and affordable at the same time that said though the range is really the only con so kind of uh an interesting option in the market i
Love the pricing i love the looks and feel the drive of this thing but ultimately i think a lot of people are going to be turned off with the range number and the capabilities of this car a little bit strange to see it throttling power in the cold it’s got to be a bad battery management thing um it’s really the first time it’s done that this week and i haven’t
Driven it in a day or so so everything is completely cold 17 degrees fahrenheit and that’s probably what it is it is improving here as we’re driving this a little bit more this thing would be an autocross hero oh it’d be so much fun around autocross course it’d be super quick it’s just so nimble there we go now we’ve got some good power i love how strong regen
Is it would be nice if mini made their chassis a little bit more playful again but there is a lot of safe understeer in all of their cars these days yeah little slalom action there the front end on this car does feel really good okay guys well there’s your mini cooper sc electric thanks for watching let me know if you have any questions in the comments we’ll
Also be posting some more videos on this on the winding road magazine youtube channel and on the daily motor youtube channel i think uh those guys are getting this car next week so there’ll be a little bit more of a delay i’ll have a jump on them in terms of video timing but yeah until then thanks for watching there’s your parking brake right down there by the
Shifter i like the controls in this mini too i mean really nothing different from any of the other cars we’ve tested everything is very user friendly and at first i wasn’t sold on this yellow greenish theme but it’s kind of growing on me and i like it it’s fine this is a fun car to live with those noises are a little bit odd though but maybe you can turn them
Off in the infotainment alright guys thanks for watching we’ll see you later next
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2022 MINI Cooper Electric SE Hardtop 2 Door – POV Review By TheTopher
