FIRST DRIVE New Mini Cooper SE 215bhp 38k Hot Hatch

That is the new Mini Electric and the headlines are that it has more range, more space and less fuss than before but it should still be fun to drive. But is it actually any good? Well we've parked it in a typical English village to find out. Well that's changed a bit hasn't it? The slightly fussy previous generation has been replaced by something a little bit less kitchen sinky. It's just a lot calmer even in this sport grade with John Cooper Works little bits and bobs. But the first thing you'll notice is that these headlights are now just more simple ovals giving it a cleaner kind of more calm face and the grille is now just one chunk instead of having weird moustaches or a big bar across the middle. It's got some texture to it so it's got a rounded curve to this edge but then there's some nice strakes in the bonnet and big news the big plastic wheel arches have disappeared this is just body side now. Then when you look down the car there's a feature line that's been lowered to make it look more compact and it's still got that floating roof with the blacked out A pillar and B pillar and as you move down it you realise that it's it's actually quite short. Now BMW who own Mini have actually used more expensive crash structures front and rear particularly at the front so that they could squash things up together and make the car a little bit shorter which is good. It's still not small but it's smaller it's great. Come towards the back though and you'll notice more kind of blending more calmness the previously Union Jack-tastic rear lights have disappeared they're now triangular they look a bit like Spider-Man spider webs I don't know why they remind me of that but they do and even with these special John Cooper Works spoilery bits and that Venturi down there the back of this car is really well formatted it's got these big shoulders that make it look quite wide and quite squat. I actually think it's really good looking it's kind of sober but not boring. Mini will have two models on offer the E which comes with a 41kWh battery 182bhp 190 miles of range on the WLTP cycle and this SE which gets the 54kWh battery 215bhp and 250 miles of lab range £33,455 for the E £37,945 for the SE both get 11kW AC charging capability which is nice and the smaller battery car gets 75kW DC with the bigger battery getting 95kW. Because neither battery is actually that massive in the big scheme of things both should charge from 10% to 80% in just under half an hour which is fine but not stunning. I always liked the old Mini's interior but this new one is on another level entirely and I happen to think it is absolutely brilliant. Now the one thing you do notice because it's pretty hard to miss is this small dinner plate sized OLED touchscreen that's circular slap bang in the middle of the dash. There are some toggles down here which I'll explain first this one is the gear selector toggle so it's very easy to flick between reverse and drive when you're doing a three-point turn then there's this one which is like a it's the key to start the car but it looks a bit like a key so it's a digital representation of an analog function it's weird but it's good and then this one alters the experiences of which we'll get to in a minute. As for this though this eye of Sauron kind of massive circular thing it's super fast, super slick and it really works everything's in its sector so you have all the usual things you know the speed in the middle, battery percentage, your mileage, the power output it just looks really nice. Now where old Minis used to try and get square shapes and fit them into circular bits and they just look a bit you know like a brick in the wrong hole this has been designed to be in this circle so it all fits and looks really trick. If I go to the home button when you flick through things it's so quick and so nice to use and everything feels really slick and like it should be in that circular effect and then when you want to do stuff like change modes the Mini has got this real sense of fun to it so they don't call them modes obviously they call them experiences and this is like the normal mode. If I go into go-kart which is the fast mode just listen to it woohoo because this this makes my teeth itch actually but listen there's a man that says woohoo is that not weird? Okay it's a bit weird but then of course the circular thing changes this is a bit more racy so it looks a bit like a chequered flag you've got more emphasis put on the sportier side of things and then as you flick through them this core which we were in before green which is basically eco mode now obviously it needs a chime that makes you feel all floaty and green. When you're driving this efficiency bird hummingbird thing flaps its wings to show you that it's it's being efficient and then if you go too fast it changes into a cat that runs. Now I don't know who needed that but it's really distracting it's like you're trying to drive gently and there's this thing sort of flapping and moving around it I mean it's funny but it's not exactly great there's vivid I'm not sure what vivid does to be honest but that's the noise it uses I think it's for listening to music and then there's timeless which I quite like now this is 60s inspired like the original minis again it's a similar layout but it just looks really cool and everything is really crisp it's it's got that weird sense of fun that I just really enjoy put it in balance and it does strange stuff like it shuts the sunroof so if you've got a panoramic sunroof in this sport model it'll actually shut it for you because it wants you to do something else I'm not really sure and it's got a digital assistant called spike which is a cartoon bulldog I would find that tremendously cheesy except for the fact that the voice control actually works and does understand people so hey mini um switch off the heated steering wheel steering wheel heating off you see it actually works and that means you don't have to swipe through the screen when you're driving I mean the rest of the car is also kind of paired back more simple that even the door cards they've got less shapes in they just look a lot more relaxed the dashboard is made of this kind of knitted material there's some sort of fake strap here I don't know what it does but it looks great everything is just working really nicely with itself it's funny it's fun there's also practicality in here it's big enough for me one of the things I don't like is that I wear big boots and I have big feet my foot keeps getting trapped just underneath the brake pedal because I wear big shoes that's possibly not ideal but then down the center of the car you've got this long line of the center console so there's a wireless charging pad up here some nice little architectural bits here cup holders and then this thing which looks like you should be able to take it out and use it as a clutch bag but I haven't figured out how to do that yet and that goes all the way to the back where there's some more cup holders the thing is I think a mini should have a bit of character and this one walks the line brilliantly now this one's a sport which means that it gets some sporty bits like the chili red roof and mirror caps a steering wheel with a fabric strap as well as these john cooper works sport seats but it's all been specced up as a level three grade which means it gets a host of additional bits and we're not talking small car stuff either we're talking a panoramic sunroof electric heated seats an interior camera adaptive led headlights a head-up display a harman kardon sound system wireless charging and the rest this is not just the leather upgrade sport cost three and a half grand and level three four and a half so to get your mini to look like this with the special gray paint we'll walk up to over eight and a half grand making it a forty two and a half thousand pound electric mini mini has never been shy offering a plethora of options to bump up those prices and the new one is no exception and as for space well there is a tiny 200 litre boot which is a little bit smaller than the outgoing mini ev although you can flop the seats if you haven't got any passengers and you need the extra space and don't forget there is the electric mini countryman if you need ultimate practicality from your mini now I will admit I was slightly worried about how the new mini would handle pleased to say that this car is not rubbish it's actually really rather good now this has got a go-kart mode which I am in now and people say the go-karts are really good because they're responsive and they handle really well but they're also about as comfortable as amateur dentistry so you don't really want that from a road car this mini isn't like a go-kart but it's got that lovely hot hatchy vibe that means you can fling it around and it really does come with you it's got a very positive front end now this car has the 54 kilowatt hour battery the slightly bigger one and that means it weighs about 1600 kilograms which is quite fat for a super mini but it gets 215 brake horsepower and about 243 pounds feet of torque and that means it's nippy rather than outright fast it's rowdy but not completely raucous so it gets from zero to 62 miles an hour in about 6.7 seconds and on to just over 100 miles an hour but my favourite thing about it is that it disguises its weight really quite nicely listen to that noise so I'm in go-kart mode which tightens things up a little bit but this has that real hot hatch vibe it's not mega quick but the steering's good the brakes work really nicely they haven't got that kind of weird ev thing going on there's some quicker evs out where the brake feels a little bit soft like it doesn't do much this is a positive thing there's a little bit of torque steer if you get heavily on the throttle which is kind of understandable because because there's a lot of torque and it's instantly available but you create enough cornering g to make everything in the car flop around the keys I've lost already they slid off the seat about 20 minutes ago but generally this is it's a fun nippy little ev and I drove it in town earlier and it's still got that ability to nip into a gap or surge across a junction it feels quite neat and safe it's still got that mini verve to it it feels like a car with a slightly longer wheelbase when it's smooth so it's very regular in its handling I will say that the ride is a little bit choppy so hit more than one or two bumps and you do get a bit of up and down motion but I kind of expect that from a mini it's not something that completely shocks me and also when you drive it faster it does settle down a little bit so coming into a big corner here you can still feel the bumps it still does pick up but again it's not super fast but it's enough to get you into trouble if you're being silly and actually just really good fun mini hasn't forgotten what this car is about and that's being positive and exciting and a bit of a laugh you're also sat quite low you've got this kind of gunslit of a windscreen nice big thick steering wheel the ergonomics are good interesting one this when the electric mini was only available with a very small battery it felt compromised when you compared it to other similar cars like I don't know a Peugeot e208 or a Vauxhall Corsair E or even a Jeep Renegade or an Alfa Romeo Junior but now it's got a bigger battery and more range it just feels like a proper option the outside is a little bit more mature a little bit more sober but the interior is techy it's charismatic and it's fun this car is still quite punchy on price when you add in a few options but it's fantastic to drive and I reckon if you want an electric super mini then the actual mini is now the one to have