Mini is going completely electric by 2030 and if you didn’t know that already, the manufacturer has just revealed a very cool one-off that reinforces its electrification plans. This one-off Mini Cooper SE Cabrio doesn’t foretell the arrival of such a variant with this generation of the model, but for the next generation Mini drop-top set to be revealed around the year 2024.
Under the skin this is identical to the Mini Cooper SE hardtop, so it packs the same 181 horsepower motor with 199 pound-feet (270 Nm) borrowed from the BMW i3s. According to Mini, this gives the drop top a sprint time to 100 km/h (62 mph) of 7.7 seconds, which is four tenths slower than the lighter SE hardtop which needs just 7.3 seconds.
It also has the relatively small battery pack with a capacity of 28.9 kWh, giving it a real world range of up to 200 km (124 miles). Mini says that it should still be good for a WLTP range of 230 km (143 miles), but we say the EPA range rating for the hardtop of 114 miles is closer to its actual real-world range.
Gallery: 2022 Mini Cooper SE Convertible One-Off
The next-gen Mini will be slightly smaller, but offer more interior room than the current model thanks to an extended wheelbase (it will also have shorter overhangs front and rear, so the proportions will be slightly different too). It will reportedly offer two sizes of battery pack, both larger than what today’s model comes equipped with: 40 kWh and 50 kWh respectively in the hotter Cooper S models, and range should increase by up to 50 percent compared to today’s model with the larger of the two packs.
Mini has already shown a camouflaged version of the next-gen model (the one the new Cabriolet model will be based on) so we imagine it will be revealed and go on sale by the end of the year. We don’t know if the Convertible model will be revealed along with the hardtop model, but we do know that all future Mini models will be built in China; no next-gen Mini models will be built in the UK anymore if some older reports prove true.
