Green Patriot, David Steinman

Green Patriot car guy Paul Scott reports that BMW is making its Mini-Cooper plug-ins available in select areas of the country.

The web was buzzing last week with stories about BMW’s Mini E. To recap, BMW will be leasing 500 Mini Es from dealers in New York, New Jersey and Southern California starting some time early in 2009. To be considered for one of these cars, visit the Mini Space site and sign up, but remember, they are only going to consider you if you live in one of the regions cited above.Those of us familiar with powerful EVs were curious where the drive train for the Mini E originated. There was speculation that Tesla was behind it, and not hearing Tesla deny it, rumors spread that it was indeed them. However, I called Nathalie Bauters of MiniUSA and she told me AC Propulsion of San Dimas, CA was their supplier. This is great news since the ACP 150 is the gold standard for EV motor/controller drive trains. She also confirmed ACP would be supplying the battery pack.

My guess is BMW finally figured out that their dalliance with hydrogen wasn’t going anywhere and that they’d better get on the stick with battery electrics since that’s where everyone else was headed. Teaming with ACP gives them instant credibility in the EV community, and they’ll gain great marketing and technical intelligence fast.

Since it is ACP’s motor/controller that is the basis of the system used in the Tesla, this will be one very fast Mini! While 0-60 in 8.5 seconds is good, it’s not close to the Tesla’s sub 4 second quickness, but part of that comes from the gearing. I suspect that the 20-70 mph acceleration will be freaking awesome! I’ve driven the e-Box from ACP and that’s the response I got. They also seem to have incorporated the very cool regen braking from ACP. Once you are used to it, you pretty much drive and brake with just the accelerator pedal. This is very similar to the regen/accelerator used by the Vectrix scooter. It’s very cool!

One of the considerations for getting selected to spend a rather high $850 monthly lease payment is that you have a locking garage. BMW will be installing their own fairly fast charger in your garage. It will charge the 35 kWh pack in under 3 hours. This is close to twice as fast as charging my RAV. The Mini’s range is said to be 150 miles. This is exactly the distance I consider to be the sweet spot for an EV. Anything more is wasted in my opinion. If you need a long distance car, you should be driving a plug-in hybrid. As for the 35 kWh pack, I was told only 28 kWh is usable. This is probably because, unlike NiMH batteries, LiIon doesn’t like being fully depleted or fully charged. I heard ACP keeps their packs from fully depleting or fully charging as they’ve learned this extends the life of the pack.

Lastly, there has been some speculation that BMW has no intention of making the Mini E into a full production car since they apparently built these cars for the purpose of getting much higher value CARB credits by making them available in calendar year 2008, even though actual placement won’t occur until 2009. I’m not sure I agree with this thinking since it’s very clear the future is going to be electric and it makes sense for an OEM like BMW to test the market as well as test the batteries. The speculation is warranted, however, by the history of the EV that many of us experienced first hand.

Be sure to listen to David Steinman’s radio program here at Ecology Radio or at WebTalk Radio. To learn more about becoming a Green Patriot visit www.greenpatriot.us. You can also subscribe to this column via RSS.