2009 Mini E First Drive and Video

Forty-five minutes is all we get with the 2009 Mini E. Our 9.4-mile loop begins and ends at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, and we won't break free of afternoon traffic in Century City.

The electric Mini Cooper's analog battery meter (which takes the place of the usual tachometer) shows 70 percent charge remaining on its lithium-ion pack. This 35-kilowatt-hour pack is comprised of three storage units, 48 modules and 5,088 individual cells; and it's stuffed not so discreetly in what was formerly the backseat.

We could spend the next hour driving gingerly, letting off the accelerator pedal whenever possible to let the front-drive electric motor do its regenerative thing to charge the battery. And then we could motor back into the valet drive at the hotel with fair confidence in Mini's 150-mile estimate for maximum cruising range.

Instead we inadvertently light up the Mini E's inside front tire during a right-hander onto Rodeo Drive. It doesn't matter that the electric motor makes only 162 pound-feet of torque when it's all available at something like 1 rpm. Now we have a new mission: We must determine how much of the Mini spirit remains in the electric Cooper.

When we arrive back at the Beverly Wilshire after 9.4 miles, the meter is down to 51 percent. Left in our hands, the 2009 Mini E would have a cruising range of 49 miles. Probably, then, this electric car shouldn't be left in our hands.

It's Only a Field Trial
At this point, it's not quite fair to lay into Mini for the 2009 Mini E's limited range.

This isn't a normal production car. If there were a real price tag on the 2009 Mini E, it would scare you. The shipping costs alone scare us. BMW sources the electric-drive components from California-based AC Propulsion, and then ships them to Germany. There they are installed in a Mini Cooper just in from the Mini plant in Oxford, U.K., and then BMW loads the whole car onto a boat bound for the United States.

The Mini E is part of a pilot program for the U.S. only. Starting in early 2009, 500 electric Mini Coopers will be leased to private and commercial customers living in Southern California and the New York-New Jersey area.

It's the first effort from BMW's Project i, a team in Munich focused on the development of a highly efficient city car. Surely the Mini E will be the only city car ever to be described as an ultimate driving machine.

Much like the programs for the fuel-cell Chevrolet Equinox and Honda FCX Clarity, the process of getting into a 2009 Mini E is a competitive one that starts with an online application. The lease term is one year with an option to extend, but no option to buy. So don't ask.

Your $850 monthly car payment covers all service visits, insurance and even the cost of your local utility company coming over to install a special electrical box in your garage (which must be lockable) to allow 2.5-hour recharges of the Mini E at 240 volts. The one thing Mini will not do is pay your monthly electric bill. We asked.

Not the Electric Car BMW Wanted To Build
There were no great plans for a cute and cuddly electric Mini. When BMW decided it needed an electric car in January 2008, the Project i engineers looked around for an off-the-shelf solution.

"If the electric-drive components would have been better fitted to the BMW 1 Series, we would have done the conversion to the 1 Series," Ulrich Knieps, vice president of corporate communications for BMW AG product and technology, tells us.

Though everything fits, the now two-seat 2009 Mini E weighs 3,230 pounds — over 500 pounds more than a Cooper S.

"A conversion is always a bad compromise," Peter Ratz, vice president of development for the Mini E, concedes. "The ideal architecture would be purpose-built. You have to choose the right axle for the electric motor, and the batteries should not intrude on cabin space.

"If I had the chance to start from scratch on an electric car with some performance, I would go for rear-axle drive." Rear-wheel drive, he says, makes better use of an electric motor's instant torque response.

At the same time, Ratz maintains that the subcompact footprint of the Mini is right for future electric-car architecture.

"We are convinced there has to be a limit in size and weight for electric cars," he tells us. "A lithium-ion battery pack has 2 percent of the energy of a gas or diesel engine of the same weight. To size up to the [compact] Golf class is possible, but then you have to use very exotic materials — aluminum, carbon fiber."

Vestiges of the Cooper S
You won't find anything exotic in the 2009 Mini E. It has the same electrically assisted power steering as other Mini Coopers, and it shares its brakes with the Cooper S.

Suspension components are the same, too, though the Project i engineers have tuned them differently to compensate for the 573 pounds of laptop batteries that have radically altered the car's weight distribution from 62 percent front/38 percent rear in the Cooper S to 53/47 in the Mini E.

Specifically, the rear spring rates are higher, while the rear stabilizer bar is less stiff. Ratz admits that they did not want the Mini E's tail to feel as lively as that of a normal Cooper during hard cornering. In addition, the limited-slip differential that's optional on the Cooper S is standard on the Mini E, and the stability control system is reprogrammed to match its different powerband.

This doesn't stop us from overjuicing the front tires during our run through Beverly Hills, but it's immediately clear the Mini E isn't into it like a normal Mini would be. It's softer and less playful through corners, and its special-compound Continental ContiProContact SSR 195/55R16 87V run-flat, all-season tires detract from the car's normally crisp steering response.

The ride over city streets is also lumpy, as if the chassis really isn't comfortable with all that extra weight.

Quick off the Line, but Odd, Too
We don't doubt Mini's claim that the 2009 Mini E will hit 60 mph in 8.5 seconds, as the car gets moving quickly in town. There's no transmission in the Mini E, of course, as the electric motor drives the front wheels directly. For reverse, it spins backward.

The whine of an electric motor makes for an understandably odd sensory experience in any car, but particularly in one that's shaped like a Mini. So does the lack of shift points. It's a loss of emotional connection in a car that's all about the connection.

More bothersome, though, is the electric motor's eagerness to go into regeneration mode whenever you lift off the accelerator pedal. It can restore up to 20 percent of the battery pack's charge. We know that's a good thing, but it feels like an invisible shipmate has dropped anchor every time it engages.

The E Is Bigger Than the Mini
If you score a 2009 Mini E, you will sit on unheated cloth seats. You will not have a navigation system due to the small power consumption-regeneration gauge added to the pie-plate speedometer. You will, however, have a USB port for your iPod.

We expect some Californians and New Yorkers will delight in the novelty — and yes, the celebrity potential — of driving a Mini E. And if you have a short commute and already dabble in Prius hyper-miling, then the year you spend with an electric Mini might be interesting enough to include in your memoir.

We'll likely sit this one out, though.

We're not terminally opposed to electric cars — we rather liked the eRuf. But this particular conversion drains the personality from one of the most personable cars on the market. After driving the 2009 Mini E, we want to hold the Mini Cooper S close and never let it go.

Edmunds attended a manufacturer-sponsored event, to which selected members of the press were invited, to facilitate this report.