Next-generation MINI EV driven

EARLY TEST We get behind the wheel of the fully electric MINI due to go on sale next year

- Steve Fowler

 

THE much-teased and often-spied all-new MINI hatch is still a year away from showrooms, but Auto Express has already been behind the wheel of the fresh, fully electric MINI Cooper and it’s set to be an even bigger hit than the current model.

Despite the imminent arrival of the new car, the current MINI is still sitting pretty in the list of the UK’s top 10 best-selling cars of 2023 with the all-electric Cooper SE accounting for 25 per cent of sales.

We’ve been invited to a snowy Austria to put the new car still in pre-production form and clad in colourful camouflage through its paces on road and track.

The car we’re driving is the new all-electric, Chinese-built Cooper SE. All new MINI hatches will take the Cooper name from next year, with electric models being built in China on a platform produced as part of a joint venture with Great Wall. Petrol-engined Coopers ona different platform but with the same look and proportions will be built in the UK at MINI’s home in Oxford. Eventually, electric MINIs will be built in Oxford, too, with an official announcement expected soon.

But first, Thomas Sycha, head of exterior design at MINI, talks us around this fifth-generation car, which probably represents the biggest shift in design between models that we’ve seen from the MINI brand under BMW ownership.

“This new car has a more aerodynamic form,” Sycha tells us. The droplet shape is ideal aerodynamically with a wider rear.” Even the wheels are flatter and more aerodynamic, with more space for the bigger brakes that are important for power regeneration in an EV.

“There are two characters to MINI,” says Sycha. The engineering simplicity of Alec Issigonis and the emotional side of John Cooper. This new model covers both those bases.”