Electric MINI confirmed for Oz

It’s official. MINI Australia will launch its first all-electric vehicle Down Under next year.

Revealed in July, the fully battery-powered MINI Cooper SE will go on sale in Australia mid-2020, when it will join the newly launched MINI Countryman plug-in hybrid in local showrooms.

The zero-emissions three-door MINI EV is already on sale in Europe priced from around 32,000 Euros before incentives, attracting 45,000 pre-orders, and pundits are projecting a starting price of about $50,000 in Australia.

MINI Australia says it will confirm locally specification and pricing closer to the car’s arrival.

The MINI Cooper SE is the first series production electric MINI. Although the company produced a limited run of MINI E vehicles in 2008, that vehicle was effectively a research project. Consumers could lease the vehicles only and the trial was terminated in 2011.

The new MINI Cooper SE hatch is a fully-fledged production car built at MINI Plant Oxford in the UK. Its packaging is essentially identical to the current MINI Cooper hatch – and it’s leading MINI’s electrification charge.

In place of the MINI E’s ponderously large battery pack (that limited that generation MINI EV to two-seater status) the new Cooper SE’s compact lithium-ion battery pack is packaged in a T-shape as part of the floor structure in the same way as BMW i3.

Speaking at the Frankfurt motor show overnight in the iconic British brand’s 60th anniversary year, MINI boss Bernd Koerber told carsales the time was now right for an electric MINI.

“[Globally] It is the right time in terms of charging infrastructure -- 2019-20 seems like a bit of a tipping point, and now it’s happening,” he said.

“We’ve made a car that looks like a MINI, drives like a MINI and it can provide a range that fits in with people’s use cases,” he explained.

Koerber said MINI was realistic of the sales numbers the MINI Cooper SE would achieve Down Under but said Australia was a market in which it was important the brand was successful.

“The markets that are still at an early stage of electromobility, we would never say we would push you and destroy the market. We will not fight for the last unit [EV sale] in a market where we see [is not ready for it],” he explained.

“We would rather like to develop the [EV] market, because the worst thing you can do is destroy things up front if you push too much in markets that are not mature, do not have the [charging] infrastructure, etc.

“From my perspective, it is how can we develop the market best [that dictates the strategy]… If that means we can do it with limited volume but some profitability, we don’t push it. And on that basis, when in five to 10 years when the market has developed, we can get the benefit from that position [we have established],” Koerber explained.

In the big chair at BMW Group’s small car brand only since April, Koerber has already had two conferences with MINI’s Australian connections. He believes Australia is an important market for MINI.

“In Australia we can do better, but we have good momentum,” he hedged.

“We have products in the pipeline that will fit very much to the market,” he said, referencing new models such as the newly launched MINI Cooper S E Countryman ALL4 plug-in hybrid with EV range boosted beyond 50km, and the new range-topping MINI Cooper JCW GP hot hatch.

“Apart from the volume, I think Australia is always a market where MINI needs to be successful. There is a heritage -- even going back to the MINI Moke,” Koerber enthused.

The MINI Cooper SE vehicle features a 135kW motor driving the front wheels. Performance is spritely but not John Cooper Works-fast.

MINI claims a 0-100km/h acceleration time of 7.3 seconds. Range is in 235-270km bracket, MINI claims.