New Mini E Powered by AC Propulsion not Tesla
October 29, 2008 by admin
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, you have to go to http://www.minispace.com/en_us/projects/electric-mini-e/ and sign up, but remember, they are only going to consider you if you live in one of the regions cited above.There was some speculation that Tesla was behind the drive train, and not hearing Tesla deny it, rumors spread that it was indeed them. However, Nathalie Bauters of MiniUSA has said that AC Propulsion of San Dimas, CA was the 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.
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. It’s likely that the 20-70 mph acceleration will be amazing! They also seem to have incorporated the very efficient regenerative 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.
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. That is about half the time of other similar EV’s.
The Mini’s range is said to be 150 miles. This is exactly the distance that most people consider to be best for an EV. As for the 35 kWh pack, only 28 kWh is usable. This is probably because, unlike NiMH batteries, LiIon doesn’t like being fully depleted or fully charged. ACP keeps their packs from fully depleting or fully charging as they’ve learned this extends the life of the pack.
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. This seems unlikely 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 unfortunate history that EV’s have had in the past.
Comments
Feel free to leave a comment...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!