The new electric Mini Cooper SE that’s just arriving in European showrooms looks a lot like the outgoing car and the revised combustion model. However, it’s not mechanically related to either of them, and it’s built in China through a joint venture that BMW has set up with Great Wall Motor called Spotlight Automotive Limited.
Here's the good news: in another sign of how advanced China's auto industry is now, the updated electric Mini is objectively better than ever. It fixes many gripes about the old models and still has the handling, performance and sense of joy that a Mini should have.
Here's the bad news: being made in China will probably keep it out of U.S. driveways for now, and it's even dealing with some tariff-related headaches here in Europe.
But whenever the politics get sorted out, Mini fans everywhere are in for a good time—no gas necessary.
(Full Disclosure: Mini loaned me a new Cooper SE for a few days for testing.)
What Is It?
Underneath its very similar body sits a bespoke EV platform that GWM uses in the car it calls the Ora Funky Cat in Europe. Mini will be quick to point out that while the Ora and J01 are mechanically related, the Cooper SE has specific Mini chassis tuning that makes it enjoyable to drive.
Unlike the Ora, which has a twist-beam rear suspension setup, the Mini features more advanced multilink suspension in the rear, which helps with both ride comfort and road holding.
With the new platform comes two sizes of battery pack and two motor power levels. Its wheelbase and track width are slightly larger than the gas Mini, but its overall length is actually lower. This gives the car slightly shorter overhangs and different proportions, but you won’t notice it unless you park it next to the gas-burning model. The easiest way to tell the two apart is to look at whether they have cladding around the wheel wells; the EV doesn’t have any.
For the first time in an electric Mini, you have the choice of two battery packs: 40.7 kilowatt-hours (36.6 kWh usable) and 54.2 kWh (49.2 kWh usable). They correspond to WLTP range ratings of up to 189 and 249 miles, respectively.
The outgoing Cooper SE had a 32.6-kWh battery (28.9-kWh usable) and a WLTP rating of just 145 miles. Its EPA range was a meager 114 miles, which was much closer to what you could expect to achieve in real-world driving conditions.
Having driven all the models made by Mini over the last 10 years, this new one—codenamed J01—felt familiar to me. It has the same stiff ride that can get a bit bouncy over uneven roads. The steering is sharp and direct and when you look out through the windscreen, it leaves you in no doubt as to what you’re driving.
But it’s also very different in many ways that all add up to quite a different experience from any Mini I’ve ever driven.
Handling Balance
You can really feel the J01’s extra weight over the older Mini Cooper SE, which was based on the F56 combustion model. My tester, which had the larger of the two available battery packs, weighed 3,700 pounds (1,680 kg) or 530 pounds (240 kg) more than the old model. The J01 with the smaller battery is a bit lighter at 3,540 pounds (1,605 kg), but it still won’t feel quite as agile as the electric F56.
Mini hatchbacks are renowned for their exceptionally sharp steering that turns even the smallest input into a significant direction change. Some don’t appreciate this characteristic and think it makes Minis feel darty, but it’s one of the things I appreciate about these cars. The J01 still has sharp and direct steering, but it doesn’t feel quite as eager to turn as I’d come to expect from a Mini.
You can still get into a rhythm and flow with the car around a winding road, but the handling is more grown-up and not quite as telepathic as before. What is the same as before is the hard ride that favors smooth roads.
The J01 doesn’t get adaptive dampers, which is a bit of a shame for a car at this price point, and it could really have used a soft setting to smooth out bumpier roads. I was surprised at how much head toss I got in this car when not on perfectly smooth asphalt.
Body roll is kept in check, though, and you can chuck it into corners at quite alarming speeds, and you’ll come out the other side grinning and a bit frightened. The front end bites remarkably well, and I found myself pushing the car quite hard before it felt like it was on the verge of understeering. It feels like it can take as much lock as you dare apply through the twisties, and it takes some time for you to adjust to become comfortable with exploring its grip limits.
While I quite fancy a completely quiet electric car, like the Tesla Model 3 whose silent surge pins you to your seat, I also think there’s nothing wrong with an EV’s interior acceleration sounds if they’re done right. In the J01, the acceleration sound you get in Go-Kart Mode, which is what the sport mode is called in this car, is terrific.
It does a great job of conveying the sensation of speed, and it actually helps you perceive speed better. It’s especially nice when you lift off when the sounds seem to break up, making you feel like you’re straddling inter-dimensional space as you decelerate.
Power, Range And Charging
My 54.2 kWh tester never showed more than 193 miles of estimated range when fully charged, although you could probably stretch that to 210 or 220 miles if you put it in Green mode and drive it below the speed limit with limited use of the air conditioning. The average electricity consumption while I had the car was just over 3.4 miles per kWh because I kept it in Go-Kart Mode most of the time and drove it spiritedly.
The small-battery model, called the Mini Cooper E, has 184 horsepower and 213 pound-feet of torque. It claims an acceleration time from 0 to 62 mph (100 km/h) of 7.3 seconds, and a top speed of 99 mph. The big-battery Cooper SE, like my tester, has 218 horsepower, 243 lb-ft, accelerates to 62 mph in 6.7 seconds, and has a slightly higher top speed of 105 mph.
There’s also a charging speed difference between the two powertrains: the Cooper E can DC fast-charge at up to 70 kW, with the Cooper SE raising that to 95 kW. Both need about 30 minutes to charge from 10 to 80%. Going from flat to full via the standard onboard 11 kW AC charger takes 4 hours for the E and just over five hours for the SE.
Compared to the previous-generation 184-hp car, the new 218-hp model doesn’t feel quite as eager to accelerate, even with the extra power. Some of that can be attributed to the fact that it has extra mass that it needs to get moving, but the motor doesn’t deliver its power quite as instantly as before.
In the old car, if you floored it at lower speeds, the traction control light would instantly come on and stay on. If you did the same with traction control off, the wheels would just spin the power away and not make much forward progress. It wasn’t very effective at putting its power down, but it also meant that you had to learn the car and know how much to press the pedal to get the most out of it in any situation.
With the new model, when you floor it off the line, the traction light will still flash, but the power delivery will feel much more gradual. Unlike the old car, the new model feels like it's torque-limited at lower speeds, specifically to prevent the aforementioned behavior.
The new car's tuning makes it faster in a straight line, but it lacks the excitement and fun of the old car. I also couldn’t find a way to turn off traction control to make it a bit more engaging through the corners and also get a better feel for its chassis—if there is a setting for it somewhere, it must be very well hidden.
Smart Looks
If you park the J01 Mini next to the new F66, you will notice that the electric car has cleaner, simpler shapes and looks more monolithic. It has a better stance on the road with its longer wheelbase and wider track, and the fact that it doesn’t have the bolt-on fender spats just makes it look more premium and upmarket.
The front end still has the same familiar grille outline as before, but most of it doesn’t let any air through—only the lower part is open. It’s quite sizable and it’s there to assert the Mini brand identity, as well as cleverly hide the sensor array for the safety systems. I also liked the headlights, which have the same familiar shape but are cleaner and less fussy to look at.
From the side, you can see that the A-pillar is much more slanted than in any other modern Mini. This is done to improve aerodynamics, and it helps the J01 achieve a drag coefficient of 0.28, down from the previous electric model’s 0.3 Cd figure. There’s just one crease on the lower part of the door, which helps break up the height of the vehicle, and between this, the blacked-out pillars and the contrasting roof, it looks quite low and sporty.
The biggest change in the rear of the car is the new light clusters. They have a completely different shape, but they still have a stylized Union Jack, a staple of Mini light design in recent years. If you want an even sportier look, Mini offers the JCW trim package, which makes the front and rear bumpers look a bit more aggressive, and it adds a substantially larger roof spoiler that makes the car look like a small touring car.
The upper limit to wheel size is 18 inches, but they look bigger than they actually are and seem just right for the size of the vehicle. I thought they were 19s when I first saw the car.
All About The Interior
While the exterior may not appear very different (even though it is), the inside will leave you in no doubt that this is a new car. Visually, it is an exceptional piece of automotive interior design, with unique materials, textures and technology that no other automaker has previously used. The screen, which we’ve covered at length in our Mini Operating System 9 review, is spectacular and a joy to use if a bit distracting at times.
Mini eliminated animal products from the interior of the J01. You don’t even get leather on the steering wheel, and while others say you can’t tell the difference, I disagree. I think the faux leather used on the helm makes noise when you slide your hand over it as it returns to center after taking a turn. This might be a weird complaint, but I also found it to be somewhat unnatural to the touch, although I will concede it looks great.
The design of the wheel was also on-point, and I quite liked the knitted plastic strap that served as its third spoke. In true BMW tradition, the rim was quite thick, to the point where the protrusions at two and ten felt like full-size palm rests. That took a bit of getting used to, but after a few days with the car, I found I didn’t mind it.
The seat upholstery was made out of a similar synthetic material, but I found its texture more pleasing. My tester had the sportier seats with the integrated headrests, which look great, but they block a lot of the forward visibility for rear occupants, which may feel quite hemmed-in when traveling in the back of a J01. Space in the rear didn’t seem any better than in the combustion Mini, even with the extra wheelbase.
There were no soft-touch plastics anywhere in the cabin of the car, and while I would usually complain about it when reviewing a premium car, I didn’t mind it in the J01. The knitted plastic material used on the dash, where it has a pattern, as well as on the door panels, where it’s plain and you can really see its unique texture, was cool.
The seating position was nice and low, helping you feel connected with the vehicle. This, for me, is a key Mini trait, and I’m happy they didn’t ruin the car by making you feel perched on top of the seat. Having also sat in the mechanically-related Ora Cat, I can attest to the fact that you sit quite a bit lower in the Mini.
Mini put most of the functions in menus that you can access via the touchscreen. The dedicated controls it did keep are all physical, so there’s nothing to slide over and activate accidentally like in some other cars. All buttons click when you press them and that’s awesome.
My final interior highlight has to be the ambient lighting. This is the first car I’ve been in that has projectors showing patterns on the dashboard. The projectors are hidden behind the big central screen, so you don’t see where the pattern is being projected from, and the effect is unique.
This along with the other places that light up at night (even around the panoramic glass roof) make this car a stunning nocturnal cruiser. Every night that I had this car, I found myself cruising through the city after sundown, enjoying the interior illumination and the excellent Harman Kardon sound system.
The Electric Mini Is Now Worthy
Gallery: 2024 Mini Cooper SE
By converting an ICE vehicle into an EV, Mini couldn’t give the old F56-based Cooper SE a big enough battery or enough range. It was still one of the most fun electric cars around a winding road, but the problem was that unless you lived very close to one, it wasn’t feasible to drive to it—to say nothing of having fun and then driving back home.
Now this has been addressed with the J01’s larger batteries, which offer way more usable range. The new car has lost some of its rowdy handling character, but it still offers plenty of fun. It’s also quicker than before once you get it moving, and Mini is working on an even more potent variant, which will be the electric car driving enthusiast’s model of choice.
It’s still not especially practical, with almost exactly the same level of rear legroom and cargo space as the gas-burning variant, but I can forgive it because its interior is something else in terms of design.
The Mini Cooper SE has a base price of €35,640 or $39,500 (about the same as the outgoing F56-based Cooper SE), and my Flavored trim tester had €12,282 ($13,600) in options bringing its total price to €47,922 ($53,200). The cheapest version you can get here €31,713 ($35,000) is the Cooper E in base Essential trim.
The Verdict: A Small, Electric Champion
High tariffs imposed on vehicles manufactured in China mean the J01 won’t come to the U.S. right now. There are talks of starting production at the Oxford factory in the U.K. after the 2026 completion of a planned expansion of the facility. That would make it feasible for the model to be imported, but we're still waiting on more details.
Regardless of timing, this is a serious upgrade for the electric Mini, all without losing what people love so much about the brand. When and if it does arrive Stateside, it should be worth the wait.
Contact the author: andrei.nedelea@insideevs.com
