Awesome.... you get to spend like 10,000 dollars switching out the batteries every 5 or so years....

We need a better battery technology that doesn't doesn't lose capacity as a function of time or times charged.

It is now cool to go green. :) They took a cool a car and made an electric version.

I'll pass. 80 mph top speed? While thats fine if its a drive to work and back car, I'm not someone with the money to own two cars. And while you don't often the opportunity to go faster than 80, I like to have the ability.

Well, this is nice and all but only 1500 charges? If you recharge it every day, that works out to a little more than 4 years of recharging. At this point I would assume you'd need a new battery pack. If the replacement battery for my laptop cost me $99, how much is one that is multiple times larger going to cost?!

David a lower top speed will be normal for most electric cars unless manufacturers decide to gear for higher speeds. The 0 to 60 time in the 6 second range is faster than 90% of cars on the road. Electric cars will mostly be that way, very quick but with a lower top speed.

120 miles on a charge???? Here in Texas it can be 120 miles round trip to work each day. To putt around town may be ok. Charge it twice a week. Taking 8 to 10 hours to charge is bad. I can just see it sitting in the driveway dead when you need it.

120 miles on a charge???? Here in Texas it can be 120 miles round trip to work each day. To putt around town may be ok. Charge it twice a week. Taking 8 to 10 hours to charge is bad. I can just see it sitting in the driveway dead when you need it.

About what I expected, really. There's just no way our current battery technology can really shine in an automobile.

I'd like to know the wattage it consumes when charging. Sure electricity from the wall is cheap, but it's not free. And what do you do in the event of a power outage?

1,500 charges (assuming you need only 1 charge a day) will last you less than 5 years. Forget traveling anywhere that is more than about 100 miles from home unless you plan to stop somewhere for the night that offers free electricity.

And for those of you who think this is a car that does not pollute at all, think again. In order to get the power to your wall, we still burn fossil fuels at power plants.

It's nice to see people trying, but I would much rather see a diesel hybrid in the US than this thing.

@ Rob: You just don't get it... Leave your comfort zone and experience the world. Most major cities have incredibly dense urban populations so this car would be great. Americans love their urban sprawl, gas guzzlers and owning massive houses on huge lots in the middle of nowhere. Of course a Mini Cooper capable of only 120 miles on a charge wouldn't interest you. It would however get me to work and back at least 25 times before requiring a recharge.

Greg: Leave your comfort zone and experience the world! There's a whole beautiful world outside of your polluted, noisy, smelly, overcrowded cities! Just because someone doesn't live in a city it doesn't mean they drive an SUV. Keep your ignorance to yourself.

@Jack O'Neil. You are correct that it the electricity from the wall requires generation some place. However, it must be easier to make a power plant more efficient and environmentally sound than try to do that with millions of cars. It is easier to use solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear for power at one plant location than build small ones for individual use. Think economy of scale. People need to stop expecting one solution will fix this major problem. If you are going to wait until the perfect solution to a problem exists, I guess you do not own a computer, TV, cell phone, house, or anything else for that matter.

Tim, very good point indeed!

"Think economy of scale. People need to stop expecting one solution will fix this major problem. If you are going to wait until the perfect solution to a problem exists, I guess you do not own a computer, TV, cell phone, house, or anything else for that matter."

Larry:

"The 0 to 60 time in the 6 second range is faster than 90% of cars on the road."

Maybe for cars you like. And nor is it that impressive unless you think Civics are fast.

@David :

"Maybe for cars you like. And nor is it that impressive unless you think Civics are fast."

Fast enough to get around town for a lot of people :)

thats nice and all... but with batteries, lets say you get into an accident on the highway, near a river. that lithium ion crap leaks out trickles into the river, and kills every living thing. or when you get rid of the car in 20 years and it goes to a car crusher, that stuff leaks out and goes into the water supply.

not so green anymore. more like black.

It's amazing how a MINI could burn!

Remembering how the Li-Ion batteries of Dell Laptops caught fire, a MINI packed up with so much Li-Ion seems a time-bomb, and the contamination that it might do if the car crashes and the batteries drain or blow tells me it's NOT A GREEN CAR

People seem to forget that making batteries is very harmful to the environment. Your average Prius costs more to own, and does more harm to the environment then a gas car, a lot of which can get even better mileage.

I'm not an environmentalist...in fact I drive a uncatted V8 trans am...but it's an interesting how narrow sighted people can be.

This car maybe ok as far as an electric conversion goes but if you design an electric car from the ground up, you can get much better results. How about a car that goes 0 - 60 in 4 seconds with a top speed of 130mph and can go 200 miles on a charge. If this sounds like your type of car, check out www.teslamotors.com
This is a much better car than an electric Mini.

This car maybe ok as far as an electric conversion goes but if you design an electric car from the ground up, you can get much better results. How about a car that goes 0 - 60 in 4 seconds with a top speed of 130mph and can go 200 miles on a charge. If this sounds like your type of car, check out www.teslamotors.com
This is a much better car than an electric Mini.

First, the thing that scares me is the 1500 recharge cycles. I expect to get more than 4 years out of a car before a major overhaul like that.

Second, if not for the recharge issue, they could embed photocells in the roof and it could charge itself all day while you are at work, unless you park in a garage. It would be a neat option.

Third, I am ignorant about this but I wonder how dangerous the batteries are in case of a collision. Probably comparable to driving around with a tank full of gasoline vapors.

This is definitely a drive around the city commuter car and would require that you have an alternate car for the weekend trips to grandma's house or whatever.

Mike:

Valid point, but there are enough "environmentalists" making sure that the battery packs in these, or even hybrids, are crash tested and designed not to leak in the event of a reasonable accident. Mini would not be so stupid as to set themselves up for those kinds of lawsuits. Likewise, you can't just dispose of a car like you said. Regular cars don't get crushed with oil, coolant, transmission fluid, and gasoline still in them...haha. If they did that company would be out of business on EPA fines after the first car. A lot of things now can't simply be disposed of, and cars are one of them. Refrigerant, mercury, precious metals, etc. are all screened in products. I can guarantee there will be a strict policy on disposing of green cars - good or bad.

Also, people are focusing strictly on the environmental aspect of these cars...don't forget that economics plays a huge part too. Fuel prices are going up, and ethanol IS NOT the answer. Just look at how much corn or grain it takes to fill an SUV...at even lower mileage. Also, why do you think we care so much about the Middle East. It is only partly that the terrorists will bomb us directly again (which is very likely) but that if the fanatics get a hold of those governments there goes our oil. Look at what Iran does as a key player in OPEC...they speak and Wall Street goes nuts. These cars can someday also mean wars won't only be fought, and military killed, for greedy, materialistic reasons.

The same complaints about electric cars again and again...

No, it's not 100% green car. Noone claims it to be. Chill out.

Of course you need energy to produce electricity, but electric gives you a choice of where you get that energy from. And, as someone already mentioned, it is easier to control emissions at a centralized location such as a coal power plant.

This is a very practical car for the city and short trips. Very low maintenance -- no moving parts except for the wheels. I think this is the main reason why we don't see the major car companies going electric -- they make a killing on the replacement parts! Zero emissions if you use wind/solar energy and still lower than hybrid emissions even if you use non-clean energy sources.

The lithium batteries in Tesla are recyclable AND landfill safe, and I bet they make sure it doesn't result in any environmental damage in case of an accident. They probably use similar technology in this new Mini.

@Clayton: Don't forget that Tesla costs $100,000 USD. This one will probably be around $50,000 if zapworld.com's small electric cars are any indication.

Tesla does plan to introduce sports sedan in 2009 in the $50K range and then even cheaper models. The technology should mature by then meaning better batteries/mileage and lower production costs. It will be exciting to watch the industry transformation in the next 3-5 years.

At least we can all probably agree, that it looks like manufacturers are at least making efforts now to be more green..Some progress is better than no progress :) I am happy to see more and more companies jumping on alternative fuels and such, so I applaud Mini for giving it a shot!

Wonder how far one of these will go on a 95-degree day with its AC cranked up?

Look, the technology is already here to reduce carbon emissions and LESSEN dependence on foreign oil. The hurdle is motivation and a big ef’ing dose of REALITY. Europe discovered a solution long ago: make visits to the pump more EXPENSIVE.

Artificially raise the price of fuel and people WILL re-think driving habits and choice of vehicle/engine. Otherwise, a spotty number of electric vehicles on [the side of] the road accomplishes nothing. Oh, and shifting the burden to the electric grid is asinine. Sure, there’s lots of talk about alternative sources of clean electricity, but I don’t see anything SOON that can support a population/infrastructure typical of a large first world country.

Why don't they just ban cars in all colors except green.
This way we can have more green vehicles on the road.
Problem solved.

I wonder how much money in electricity you will spend each time you charge this thing for 8-10 hours. 120 miles (best case) is 4-5 gallons of gas, which is about $15-17.

Best case, 1500 charges at 120 miles each charge gives you 180,000 miles total. Personally, I drive ~1000 miles per month, so the battery would last me about 15 years based on mileage.

People keep arguing that they have to drive over 120 miles per day. Well obviously this isn't going to be a car that interests you. However, for the majority of us who live within 10 miles of work, the mileage would be fine.

My question would be, what does '1500 charges' mean exactly? Does it mean full charges of the battery? Most people would want a full tank of juice just in case, so they're going to charge daily even if their battery still has a lot of power left.

Even so, this car will probably be low-production, and only rich people will buy it to start with as a play-toy. Just like any other mini owner.

Drive 2 hours, recharge 8... sounds good enough... COME ON!

and dont forget that you cant let this car waiting in the airport for you for a week, because by that time it already discharged..

its very good that they are trying, but they gotta do much better if they wanna sell.

i hate to see uninformed comments here and there.
someone out there buying a hybrid or electric could be turned off with all these.

It is much more efficient to power your car with electric motors whose power came from power plants than any petrol engine out there. it is even more efficient if the electricity came from hydro, solar, wind, geothermal power plants.
simply, manufacturers wouldn't bother with electric cars if it did not.
Hybrids are only out there to compensate for the battery disadvantages.

Batteries in the Prius don't cost much to manufacture (cost of car???), and recycling is there so you don't throw your hybrid batteries anywhere you like.

upl8n8 you have a good point, read it people.

The big question here is, how much are they going to sell this. You wouldn't want this if it costs twice a mini cooper S.

The Prius batteries cost around 2500-3000 to replace, and need to be replaced about every 5 years. The production of the batteries them selves causes huge environmental carnage.

The batteries are shipped from Canada, to China for assembly in huge barrages pumping out emissions, then shipped back to Canada...in huge barrages for distribution, then shipped out to the manufacturer's plants.

The strip mining of the resources to make theses batteries has left huge crater in Canada as well.

The cost to own a Prius is higher then a gas car. You're going to pay a 2500 dollar premium to purchase a hybrid car, and then another 2500 in 5 years to replace the batteries.

The resale value will plumit on any electric, or battery assisted car because of the risk of having to do a major over haul replacing batteries. I don't buy a car that is known to average around 200 thousand miles, when it has 180 thousand on it already...and no one is going to buy a 4 year old car that has 1 year left on it either.

Five thousand dollars will buy a lot of gas. Besides, Diesel cars can get around 60mpg, and gas cars can get up to 50....hybrids are pointless, and full electric cars even more so.

@Cory: "Five thousand dollars will buy a lot of gas. Besides, Diesel cars can get around 60mpg, and gas cars can get up to 50....hybrids are pointless, and full electric cars even more so."

You rant about a hybrid car (Prius) which has little to do with this thread and then jump to a conclusion about electric cars??

Your Prius criticisms are valid, however you are not taking into account the economies of scale. No surprise, there's no math comparing the actual environmental damage involved in Prius' production vs benefits of lower emissions and less gas consumed.

Batteries in the electric cars are lithium ion vs lead acid used in Prius. Lithium batteries are both recyclable and landfill safe as it was already mentioned.

Electrics are very different from hybrids in one other aspect -- they have an electric engine with no moving parts, no internal combustion engine that needs regular maintenance and parts replacements. This alone will seriously offset the price of battery replacement after 5 years or so.

A major benefit of full electrics is the ability to run on solar/wind produced electricity. Even if the electricity is produced by coal, they are still more efficient than current hybrids/ diesels. As far as I can see, electrics hold the most promise for the future of automobile technology and will play a major role in the shift away from fossil fuels.

You're right Alex,

Any car that can get 50 to 60 MPG could benefit from gas saving technologies.

Electrics will have significantly less maintenance, I doubt they'll be Zero maint, but less.

Let's do some math, 180K (done earlier in the list) that's 60 "3K" mile services and 6 "30K" mile services. That's $1,200 @ $20 and $1,200 @ $200 (I think that's conservative). That's 1/2 the way there. So if we could save $3,000 on "fuel", we're there.

It might not be perfect, but so long as the car doesn't cost $100K, we're on our way.

People,

PLEASE, dont say electric motors dont have moving parts. I get what you mean, but its simply not the truth.

And, you DO need to change some parts at DC electric engines with the time.

I really would like te see a study about the impact on battery production for hybrids.

For those talking about scale economy, its true thats more efficient to produce energy *(actually convert) in a power plant than in the cars, BUT it has to be done fairly close to the costumer, otherwise you would loose to much in the transmition.

Rafael: You got me there...

"For example, the typical four-cylinder engine of a conventional car comprises over a hundred moving parts. By comparison, the motor of the Tesla Roadster has just one: the rotor. So there’s less weight to drive around and fewer parts that could break or wear down over time."

http://www.teslamotors.com/engineering/how_it_works.php

The point still stands, there's no comparassment in maintenance of electric vs internal combustion engines. "Who Killed The Electric Car" illustrated this quite nicely if you saw the movie.

Alex,

I completly agree that electric engine require less change of parts, and are lighter and smaller than their gas competitors. My point is, they are not a perfect machine that works forever.. especially DC engines.. Three-phase AC engine are another history though. but you cant put one of these in a car efficiently.

Just to tell you one problem that we have right now with electric engines: vibration! not from the engine thats really quite, but it cant handle vibration neither from the load that you put on it, nor from the suspesion. Everyone that worked with big electric engines know what kind of damage vibration can do.

Plugin cars will only really work (i mean, for the maiority of people) when someone develop a lighter, much more capable battery (an of course "green" to produce and dispose).

As I said, im glad people is working on it, and every improvement is very welcome. But i just think we are still quite far from a solution.

you don't change battery of hybrids every 5 years.
especially when you drive most of the time at highway speeds since the only the petrol engine works.

electric motors is still more reliable and easy to maintain than a combustion engine.
i don't know about vibration you talking about, but i'm sure it is application dependent.

CHARGING CYCLES: I'm not sure about lithium batteries, but I know that, for lead acid batteries, it is far better to charge them when they are only partially drained, rather than fully drained. Fully draining a lead acid battery does a lot of internal damage and severely shortens their life.

When a manufacturer says '1500 charge cycles' I wish they'd state if that is figured at charging batteries drained of 50% of their charge, or 80%. That could makea huge difference.

COST OF REPLACEMENT: A thought occurred to me. I wonder what a gallon of gas (or deisel) is going to cost in 5-7 years? It's possible a new battery pack will be comparatively cheap.

boring, I hear the same arguments every time. Not enough speed, not enough range, Batteries pollute too, Producing electricity pollutes.

It is amazing that people will only care for the environment as long as they don't have to make any changes to their driving habits or lifestyle.

Range could be much greater with lighter carbon based car designs but nobody would want to drive a lightweight in between the onslaught of selfish SUV drivers who want to be safe at the cost of other peoples lives.

Maybe urban sprawl has gone too far and people need to live closer to their work places. Muscle cars will become a thing of the past except for those that do car racing as a sport on a track.

We need transport and for that we need portable energy. Oil is not renewable but electricity is. Electricity can be made from coal, nuclear, oil but also from wind and solar and whatever else will come along. Therefore consider electricity a universal state of energy that makes you less dependent of a particular energy source. Surely you understand that it is cleaner and more efficient to have a large land based electricity plant burning fossil energy than millions of tiny vehicles doing the same?

Finally, battery pollution. This might be a problem but I do want to point out that the petrol at the pump did not come out the ground like that. Oil refineries are also polluting as they produce the petrol we use.

Times are changing and we need to change with them or be left behind. An electric car is not for everyone today but in life you can make choices. Choose your next residence or job to be closer to work for example.

I live just outside of town. Nowadays work from home 3 days per week and would love to travel around town using a car like this. A smaller two seater even. Unfortunately such vehicles are hard to obtain in New Zealand.

Here is a great solution with real world capabilities.

http://www.switch2hydrogen.com/

I'm real interested in the injection system, 25% increase would be good enough for me!

Battery Pollution: This is an issue with two faces.

On one hand, the process of getting the raw materials for batteries can be seen as very destructive and polluting. Plus, the current manner of disposing of batteries can be seen as even more polluting, largely because we ship used batteries to 3rd world countries, where cheap labor and lack of environmental protection laws both trashes those environments and fills corporate pockets.

On the other hand, the current most common rechargable batteries (lead acid) are made of materials that are very ammenable to recycling, IF IT'S DONE RIGHT. If it's done right (I must say again), most of the lead in lead acid batteries can be recovered and reused in new batteries. This both keeps that lead from being tossed into dumps and rivers, but also decreases the need to mine out more.

I don't know how this applies to lithium ion or NiMH batteries.