Mini Cooper SE

An all-new Mini is here, and this time it's all electric. Can the 215bhp Cooper SE capture the unmistakable Mini magic of its combustion-engined forebears?

- YOUSUF ASHRAF

MINI IS UNDERGOING ITS BIGGEST transformation since the turn of the millennium. Its future will be electric, and heavy investment is being pumped into new-gen models that will see the entire Mini range revamped by the end of this year. There's a buzz around the brand and it all sounds promising - until you read the spec sheet of the new Cooper SE hatchback. 215bhp, 243lb ft, 250 miles of range, 1605kg... sorry, what? A three-door supermini that weighs almost as much as an Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio? That must be a typo.

It isn't. Despite being built on a brand-new EV platform, the Cooper SE has piled on 240kg over its Mini Electric predecessor, giving it what must be one of the worst size-to-weight ratios of any new car. The flip side is that some of that mass comes from a substantially larger, 49.2kWh battery pack, which makes the new model (quite literally) miles more useable than the old one ever was with its puny 145-mile WLTP range. That's now been extended to 250 miles, while 95kW charging capability means a 10-80 per cent topup takes half an hour.

There's more power than before too. The SE still has a single electric motor mounted at the front, but its outputs have increased by 34bhp and 44lb ft. The resulting totals are on a par with those of Alpine's A290, which is shaping up to be a real contender in the electric hot hatch space judging by our early drive in a prototype (evo 320). However, being 126kg lighter the Alpine is the quicker of the pair, beating the Mini's 6.7sec 0-62mph time by three tenths.