Mini Countryman electric (inc. 0-100) review: Best mid-sized electric SUV?
Good day. I’m Paul. So, the BMW Group Mini sits under there and that means they get to share a lot of platforms and this is the latest example of that and something I’ve been really looking forward to driving cuz I just love the the cool vibe behind Mini. You’ve got BMW stuff which is sort of elegant and and luxury. Whereas this just takes on a whole different persona and it gives the BMW group a chance to kind of play with things and just get a different vibe on the inside and outside as well. So, this is the Mini Countryman. It’s available both as an internal combustion and an electric. This is the fully electric one. It is the SE all four and it is the favored trim which is one of the the topsp spec trims before you get to the JCW. So, this is priced at around $75 odd,000. It shares a platform with the X1 and it is much cheaper than the X1 alternative. So, um just something worth keeping in mind. Today, we’re going to do a detailed review of this car. So, if you want to skip ahead to other parts of this review, you got time codes on the screen there, or if you’re on YouTube, you can scroll down and use the chapters below. Now, let’s talk about design. That is why you’re buying one of these. And they really have just gone to town on customizations and giving you the ability to to have your own unique look. And to me, this is a cool looking car. Like, the EX1 isn’t a bad looking car by any means, but this just has a different vibe to it. So, big grill down the front here, but you can see most of that’s closed off with the radar up the top there. And then the gold mini logo and the gold highlights around the grill as well. You get full LED headlights over here. And if we zip around to the side, have a look at the gold accents on these wheels, too. They look fantastic. So, 20-in alloy wheel with those gold accents and piano black there in the center. Even these wheel arches have this uh sort of slotted section throughout them there, which is just again just a different vibe and something a little uh little unique on the road there. So, uh, camera and indicator built into that wing mirror. So, this gets the same flush door handles as its BMW cousin, and it just means that when you open and close, you’re basically just pulling that up, and it sits flush with the body. That gold section continues down the bottom there as well. You’ve got privacy glass roof rails, glass roof there as well. This little uh sort of what looks like a sticker over here, I reckon. Uh, and then all four, which signifies that this is the all-wheel drive with an electric motor on the front axle and an electric motor on the rear axle. Come around to the back with me now. Around the back you’ve got countrymen in individual lettering with another gold mini logo. Now it is interesting even though this is the SE. It’s it’s labeled S. Um so a bit of a weird one. Uh down the bottom here you’ve got uh sort of matte colored diffuser and then more of that gold section down there as well. This kind of spoiler, this hooded area. It would have been nice for them to integrate the wiper up the top there so it stays sort of hidden away, but not the end of the world. Now let me know what you reckon about the design in the comments section below. Have you considered a Mini over a BMW? I’m keen for your feedback. So, we’re inside the Countryman. This is what the key looks like. You’ve got the Mini logo there. You’ve got unlock boot uh the diamond there to switch lights on. You’ve got mini branding on the back of the key. It’s a proximity sensing key. So, once you’re inside and grab the door handle to get inside, you’ve got a power key thing, like a fake key thing here, kind of like a 911. So, it’s a little bit different. Um and then you notice here as well, you got the gear shifter there, too. are just um something different. In fact, this whole interior is just something different. I mentioned before the customization. I just love the fact that this looks unlike any other car on the road really. You’ve got all this fabric that runs along the doors. You’ve got a circular screen here and it is so high resolution. So, it’s an OLED display and it it is just super sharp and actually doesn’t work too badly. I’ve been playing around with this for a little while and um it seems to work fairly well and you can have basically a number of different functions on display there. So, I’ll run you through those when we uh do our infotainment thing, but um yeah, just interesting setup. Um terms of the touch points, so soft there on the center and a little firmer on the door there. How soft are they? Well, we’ve got our durometer. We’ve tested the main surfaces in this cabin. So, if you want to see how this car compares to others that we’ve tested before, there’s a link in the description below. Now, build quality. What is it like? Do a little shake test here. I think that’s designed to be a bit loose there, but um yeah, feels pretty good. Um and this is what the door slam sounds like. Now, let’s talk infotainment. So, um yeah, have a look at this. So, it’s just under 10 in in size, but it’s an OLED display, which gives them the ability to do these crazy shapes like the the circle here, but ultra high resolution. It is um yeah, just a very cool looking setup. So, you can sort of configure a number of different things here. So, you can go through these sort of main menus where you’ve got weather and that sort of stuff, but you can then also have the traditional mini uh taco and and speedo there, but then you also have different experiences. So, some of these are linked to drive modes as well, but when you flick through these, they sort of just change the way everything looks on the screen. Like, it’s just a it’s just so fascinating. I haven’t seen sort of anything anything like this before in a car. So they’ve really lent into all of this customization and yeah just offering a difference there in terms of how it all looks. So uh quite a fan of that. So inbuilt satellite navigation. So you don’t need to have smartphone mirroring if you don’t want to. Now the good thing with the inbuilt satellite navigation is that it takes up uh pretty much all of this screen area here. And I’ll show you what I mean by that in just a second. That all sort of works quite nicely if you do have smartphone mirroring running. So, you’ve got Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. What you’ll notice is that it does this weird boxy display here, and then every time you get warnings pop up, it then shrinks the display as well. So, it just looks a little bit weird and doesn’t look like it sort of natively belongs there. So, I think that’s something that that they need to work on. And we’ve seen Aston Martin now with its uh full Apple CarPlay integration. It’s just a much nicer setup where it uses Apple as the the operating system effectively for everything that’s displayed there. that gives you a lot of uh control over to Apple and some manufacturers like BMW probably don’t want to do that. So, this might be as good as it gets, but let’s hope they can figure out a better solution than that sort of boxy arrangement there. So, same story with uh Android Auto as well. It sort of does this this boxy arrangement here too. So, yeah. Anyway, um now in terms of sound system, you have a Harman Carden branded sound system with AM FM and DAB digital radio. It’s nice sound system and if you’re paying this kind of money, you kind of want a nice sound system as well that comes with it. So, um, that’s all good to see. Ahead of the driver, you’ve got a head-up display with augmented reality, but it’s one of these sort of cheaper sort of chintzy setups where the screen folds out. It’s not really like a a proper setup, which is fine. You know, it does the job, but it’s just not as not as nice to look at, uh, in my opinion. Now, in terms of parking, you’ve got front and rear parking sensors and a 360 camera. I’ll show you what that looks like. So, there it is. Quality of that is pretty reasonable. Uh you can see the top down view there. It’s got the reversing assistant. Uh let’s see what else we’ve got here. Okay, so some wider panoramic views there as well with the 3D view as well to whip around the car. Back looks like don’t love that feature. I don’t know how that really works. But a car wash view there as well to line up wheels when you’re driving into a car wash. So yeah, pretty uh decent setup. And this is what the horn sounds like. Now, moving on to practicality and connectivity. You’ve got a wireless phone charger up the top here. Two USBC ports down here with a 12vt outlet. Terms of storing things, uh, this kind of a common theme now for some reason with these electric cars. You’ve got all of this space, but barely any of it is covered. So, if you do need to store valuables, you can see everything from outside the car. The only spot you have is this tiny little sort of area here. I do love that there’s that little fabric thing there as well. There’s actually a fabric thing here on the steering wheel, too. Just a cool little different design. Um, this may look like it opens, but it doesn’t. All it does is slide forwards and backwards. So, yeah, from a storage point of view, it’s not great through the center there. And then you have a actually pretty reasonably sized glove box there, but no sunnies holders unfortunately. You do have a camera up here for selfie mode, so you can take pictures of yourself while you’re in the car, which is something just a little bit different. And then on the comfort front, you have dual zone automatic climate control, heated seats, and heated steering wheel as well. In terms of comfort of the seats, so uh they’re fairly comfortable. You’ve got the JCW seats here in the in the favored specs, so they sort of hug you in nicely. You’ve got a litany of adjustments. Both driver and front passenger are electrically adjustable, so you can go forwards, backwards. Your back rest can go forwards and backwards. So you can lift the front of the seat, back of the seat, you’ve got lumbar adjustment, seat memory as well. On the steering front, uh steering is both tilt and reach adjustable. Now, second row, um not a huge amount of space here, so not much knee room. Tow room isn’t great. Uh head room is reasonable. So not an enormous SUV. Uh probably just smaller family style stuff. Uh you’ve got two vents down here with two USBC charging ports, map pockets, a center armrest with two cup holders there as well. Um yeah, it would be nice if it was just a little bit bigger here with a bit more space. But anyway, um now does the window go all the way down? Let’s find out. So it’s auto up and down. Not quite. Now let’s talk cargo space. So you’ve got power tailgate. Uh just under 500 L to work with. So, this is reduced capacity uh beneath the internal combustion version because of the electric motor here at the at the back of the vehicle. Uh and then under floor, you’ve got some storage there for your cables, which is good. And then, uh there’s 12vt outlet off to the side there. If you don’t want more space, you can drop the second row. But one thing I just noticed, have a look at this. Some pretty not very good build quality there. So, um and then the other problem as well is you can’t drop the second row from here as well. You got to go around the side to release that side and you can drop this as well. I mean, that is the most convoluted system ever to drop a second row. Um, yeah, that is so frustrating. Anyway, uh, that expands the space to a little under 1,500 L. Now, let’s talk about battery and charging before we go for a spin. So, battery capacity is about 65 kW hours. It’s an NCM battery, so it’s a battery that contains nickel. And that tends to mean that you don’t really want to be charging it to 100%. About 80% is the sweet spot for it. On the charging front, you can charge AC on three-phase up to 11 kW. 3-phase AC charging up to 22 kW is also supported with the right charger. And then DC uh offers a max charging rate of about 130 kW, but an average at about 100. So, okay, but not amazing there in terms of those figures. Now, in terms of your driving range, just over 400 km on the WLTP cycle. So, we’ve just hit the road in the Countryman, the electric countryman. So, just as a reminder, being an all-wheel drive, this means it has two electric motors. One sits on the front axle, one sits on the rear axle. So, it just gives you a bit more uh shore already on the road, a bit more traction as you’re driving as well. So, it just elevates that driving experience and just gives you a bit more pep, too. The only downside to that is that it uses more electricity because you’re adding the weight of another motor and then you’re also powering that motor. So, it all sort of ends up consuming a little bit more. Terms of power outputs though, just over 200 kW of power and almost 500 new m of torque. So, what does that all mean in theory? So, if you punch the throttle, gives you a nice push in the back. It’s nothing sort of over the top or outrageous, but it feels sort of nice and brisk and uh moves along very sharply. Uh, which is kind of what you want from an electric vehicle. you don’t want it being dull. This sort of just gets up and moves which is good news. And in terms of the economy, I mentioned before that uh you pay a penalty there. Um I was having a look at the official figure which sits at around the 17 kwatt hours per 100 km mark. Here we’re sitting at over 20 over the past 1700 k. So that is pretty thirsty. Uh and if you have a look at some of the other competitors in this segment, you’re talking about efficiencies that are much closer to that sort of 15 mark. So, I think there’s probably a bit of work to be done there on efficiency. You’re going to lose a little bit of that on low profile, sportier tires and a sportier design as well. So, I think that is um something that BMW can potentially work on. The one thing BMW does really well uh when you put it into drive uh you can actually put it into then B, which is attached to drive with another sort of pull down of your your drive selector that does single pedal driving. So, when that’s engaged has a really strong regen and then it goes all the way through to being stationary. and they’ve just tuned it beautifully. So, it is really nice and smooth and it’s my go-to when I’m driving like a an electric BMW or Mini product because it just works. There’s no complaints about it. So, um yeah, definitely a good feature. Now, in terms of the ride, it’s got a firmer edge to it. Feels sort of sporty, which is what you sort of get from this vibe of this vehicle, but it’s not over the top and not too firm. You do get a fair bit of road noise, though, so especially on these coarse chip roads. We put it up against our calibrated sound meter. If you do want to see how this compares to other cars that we’ve tested, have a look at the link in the description below. You just notice fair bit of noise coming into the cabin. So, in terms of visibility, uh you can see clearly down the front there. Uh this head-up display, I’m just really not a fan of it. It sort of sits in a weird position. So, my steering wheel when it’s lifted up kind of blocks it and you can adjust the height of it and stuff, but we just prefer to have it up the top there. Uh the wing mirrors are nice and decent, so I can see right down the side of the car. Visibility out the back is okay, but not amazing. It’s quite a narrow window, so it is just a little tricky to see, but you got all the parking sensors and stuff to make low speed maneuvers pretty straightforward. Okay, let’s see what the ride is like and what the body controls like when the speed picks up. So, we test body control on our sine waves at 130, which is the maximum speed limit here in Australia. Gives us a good idea of how the package comes together. Oh, that feels fantastic. Very nice. So, while this car doesn’t have adaptive damping, it has frequency selective damping, which means that as the suspension goes over different frequencies of vibration on the road, it can adjust how firm it is. And you can see there in that instance knows we’re doing a consecutive sine wave and then it adjusts accordingly. Gives you that nice smooth ride with decent body control. And in around town, it’s actually quite nice as well. It’s not over the top or too rough. Just feels very composed. Now, bumpy road time. We do this at 90 ks an hour. This is a terrible road. A replica of a terrible road. So, gives us an idea of what this frequency selective damping is like. Yeah, it feels nice. Very good. And we’ve got a condensed sine wave here as well. Oh, that is really, really impressive. Yeah. So, it’s got that sort of firmer edge to it, but it’s it’s definitely not over the top and it’s quite comfortable here, especially on this terrible sort of road that we’ve got here. feels much better than it does in the new X3. Now, drive modes wouldn’t really you got these experiences and if you go to go-kart makes funny sound when it engages, but gives you this different meter here. So, I’ve engaged that. Let’s go for a drive around the track here. Uh we test all cars back to back in the same way to see what they feel like, but I’m just curious to see whether this has the sportiness that it appears to have. So, [Applause] Little bit of body roll there, but um this holds on nicely. Love the throttle response in this go-kart mode. It’s really nice and sharp. Throttle out of here. Oh, very good. This thing is moving along really nicely. You can also enable like the sort of inducted noise as well if you’re into that kind of thing. Um yeah, this is moving along really nicely. Don’t love the steering feel. I had this complaint with the new X3 as well that they’ve just kind of BMW used to be the masters of steering feel, but they’ve just killed it. So, um, this is kind of in the same boat. You don’t get a great deal of steering feel, which is a shame because it’s quite a sporty little package. You can see they’ve really focused on giving this some some pep and some sporty intention. You know what? I’d actually love to drive the internal combustion John Cooper Works version of this. I think we’ll try and organize that as well. Give it a punch in our back straight. This is hoofing along really nicely. Very good. Now, time to test the semi-autonomous systems. And we do this at 70ks an hour on the three outer lanes of the bowl here. So, want to see how willing it is to hold the vehicle within its lane. So, let’s see how we go. Okay, so assisted driving mode is active. Wait for the steering wheel to go green. All right, there it is. There. So, looking good in this first lane. Uh, BMW products are actually typically pretty good. So, jump over to the next lane. See what it’s like up here. Right to go green as well. Taking a while. There we go. Okay. So, that’s green. Holding itself really nicely there, too. Okay, now the challenge, the outermost lane. Let’s see how it performs up here. All right, wait for that to go green. Still waiting. It doesn’t look like it’s liking this much at all. Yeah, it’s not going to activate. Um, yeah, sometimes these systems, I don’t know. You can see they’re in the first two lanes. Took a little while to to switch on, but yeah, no, not liking us. So, pass in lane one and two, but not for the third lane. Now, time to do some performance testing. So, we’ll pop this into go-kart mode and uh can’t get over that sound. Uh we’re going to go 0 to 100 and then all the way through to 120 so we can get our 80 to 120 overtaking time. We’ll come back and do a stop from 100 as well. So, okie dokie. Here we go. Very nice and strong off the line. The official time is a little over 5 seconds. So there’s 100 and 120. All righty. 0 to 100, 5.66 seconds, 80 to 120, 3.89. So the 3.89 is a pretty good number there. So, it shows you that that mid-range overtaking pace is uh is pretty reasonable. By the way, this is what the Mini Sound drives like sounds like rather. [Music] It’s quite funny. I’m going to switch that off. Okay, time to do a stop from 100. Make sure the phone doesn’t go flying. All righty. So, let’s see what it feels like. All right. So, this is a good indication what the tire and brake package is like. Uh, so 100 to zero. Uh, 2.72 seconds, 38.01 m. So, uh, not too bad. Sort of between 35 and and 40 is where you want to be. Um, all righty. See how quick it goes in reverse. Here we go. That’s nice. Accelerates hard. So, 42 km, 43 km an hour. So, the Mini Countryman, what do we reckon? Um, look, I’m keen to drive the internal combustion version. Uh, this being the full electric one, I think it does all the full electric stuff really well. Where it’s let down a little bit is battery capacity and range. I just think it needs a slightly bigger battery with a bit more driving range just because the the 400 odd km it says it does when it’s cold like this, you’re really not going to be achieving anywhere near that. So, uh, giving yourself an extra buffer with a bigger battery would fix that. But outside of that, I love the interior. I love the tech. I just love the way that it’s all laid out and it’s just completely different to everything else on the road. So, let me know what you reckon. Have you had a look at one of these? And did you go for the internal combustion version or did you end up going for the electric one? Let me know in the comments section below. If you did enjoy this video, please make sure you like it and you share it with your mates as well. But until next time, take it
We’ve finally had the chance to drive the all electric Mini Countryman. But is this electric SUV a bit expensive for what you get? Paul Maric gets behind the wheel for a comprehensive review to find out.
Hardness tester, noise and lane keeping results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior: 00:59
Interior: 02:49
Infotainment: 04:17
Practicality: 07:25
Charging: 10:18
On the Road: 10:57
Driver aids: 16:32
Accel. & braking: 18:00
Verdict: 19:44
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