Mini Countryman electric (inc. 0-100) review: Best mid-sized electric SUV?

CarExpert

We’ve finally had the chance to drive the all electric Mini Countryman. But is this electric SUV a bit expensive for what you get? Paul Maric gets behind the wheel for a comprehensive review to find out.  Hardness tester, noise and lane keeping results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE  Skip Ahead: Intro: 00:00 Exterior: 00:59 Interior: 02:49 Infotainment: 04:17 Practicality: 07:25 Charging: 10:18 On the Road: 10:57 Driver aids: 16:32 Accel. & braking: 18:00 Verdict: 19:44  We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.  Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.  Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1  You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.  Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!  Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!  CarExpert: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarExpertAus Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au  Paul Maric: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaric Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric  #mini #countryman #review

Transcript

00:00G'day, I'm Paul. So the BMW Group Mini sits under there and that means they get to share a lot of

00:05platforms and this is the latest example of that and something I've been really looking forward to

00:10driving because I just love the the cool vibe behind Mini. You've got BMW stuff which is sort

00:15of elegant and luxury whereas this just takes on a whole different persona and it gives the BMW

00:20Group a chance to kind of play with things and just get a different vibe on the inside and outside

00:25as well. So this is the Mini Countryman. It's available both as an internal combustion and an

00:30electric. This is the fully electric one. It is the SE All 4 and it is the favoured trim which is one of

00:37the top spec trims before you get to the JCW. So this is priced at around $75,000. It shares a

00:45platform with the X1 and it is much cheaper than the X1 alternative so something worth keeping in mind.

00:50Today we're going to do a detailed review of this car so if you want to skip ahead to other parts of

00:54this review you've got time codes on the screen there or if you're on YouTube you can scroll down

00:58and use the chapters below. Now let's talk about design that is why you're buying one of these

01:02and they really have just gone to town on customizations and giving you the ability to

01:07have your own unique look and to me it's a cool looking car like the iX1 isn't a bad looking car by

01:14any means but this just has a different vibe to it so big grill down the front here but you can see

01:18most of that's closed off with the radar up the top there and then the gold Mini logo and the

01:24gold highlights around the grill as well. You get full LED headlights over here and if we zip around

01:30to the side have a look at the gold accents on these wheels too they look fantastic so 20 inch

01:36alloy wheel with those gold accents and piano black there in the center even these wheel arches have

01:40this sort of slotted section throughout them there which is just again just a different vibe and

01:46something a little a little unique on the road there so a camera and indicator built into that wing

01:51mirror so this gets the same flush door handles as its BMW cousin it just means that when you open

01:57and close you're basically just pulling that up and it sits flush with the body that gold section

02:01continues down the bottom there as well we've got privacy glass roof rails glass roof there as well

02:06this little uh sort of what looks like a sticker over here American and then all four which signifies

02:12that this is the all-wheel drive with an electric motor on the front axle and an electric motor on the

02:16rear axle come around to the back with me. Now around the back you've got countrymen in individual

02:21gold mini logo now it is interesting even though this is the SE it's it's labeled S um so a bit of

02:27a weird one uh down the bottom here you've got a sort of matte colored diffuser and then more of

02:32that gold section down there as well this kind of spoiler this hooded area it would have been nice for

02:37them to integrate the wiper up the top there so it stays sort of hidden away but not the end of the

02:41world now let me know what you reckon about the design in the comments section below have you

02:45considered a mini over a BMW I'm keen for your feedback so we're inside the countryman this is

02:51what the key looks like you've got the mini logo there you've got unlock boots uh the diamond there

02:57to switch lights on you've got mini branding on the back of the key it's a proximity sensing key

03:02so once you're inside grab the door handle to get inside you've got a power key thing like a fake key

03:07thing here kind of like a 911 so it's a little bit different um and then you notice here as well

03:12you've got the gear shifter there too so just um something different in fact this whole interior is

03:17just something different I mentioned before the customization I just love the fact that this

03:22looks unlike any other car on the road really you've got all this fabric that runs along the

03:27doors you've got a circular screen here and it is so high resolution so it's an OLED display and it is

03:33just super sharp and actually doesn't work too badly I've been playing around with this for a little

03:39while and um it seems to work fairly well and you can have basically a number of different functions

03:44on display there so I'll run you through those when we do our infotainment thing but um yeah

03:49interesting setup now terms of the touch points so soft there on the center and a little firmer on

03:54the door there how soft are they well we've got our durometer we've tested the main surfaces in this

03:59cabin so if you want to see how this car compares to others that we've tested before there's a link in

04:03the description below now build quality what is it like I'm doing a little shake test here I think

04:08that's designed to be a bit loose there but um feels pretty good um and this is what the door slam sounds like

04:13now let's talk infotainment so um yeah have a look at this so it's just under 10 inches in size but

04:23it's an OLED display just gives them the ability to do these crazy shapes like the the circle here but

04:28ultra high resolution it is um yeah just a very cool looking setup so you can sort of configure a

04:34number of different things here so you can go through these sort of main menus where you've got

04:38weather and that sort of stuff but you can then also have the traditional mini uh taco and speedo

04:44there but then you also have different experiences so some of these are linked to drive modes as well

04:49but when you flick through these they sort of just change the way everything looks on the screen like

04:56it's just it's just so fascinating I haven't seen sort of anything anything like this before in a

05:02car so they've really lent into all of this customization and yeah just offering a difference

05:09there in terms of how it all looks so uh quite a fan of that so inbuilt satellite navigation so you

05:14don't need to have smartphone mirroring if you don't want to now the good thing with the inbuilt

05:18satellite navigation is that it takes up uh pretty much all of this screen area here and I'll show you

05:23what I mean by that in just a second that all sort of works quite nicely if you do have smartphone

05:28mirroring running so you've got apple carplay and android auto what you'll notice is that it does

05:34this weird boxy display here and then every time you get warnings pop up it then shrinks the display

05:40as well so it just looks a little bit weird and doesn't look like it sort of natively belongs there

05:46so I think that's something that they need to work on and we've seen aston martin now with its

05:51full apple carplay integration it's just a much nicer setup where it uses apple as the the operating

05:56system effectively for everything that's displayed there that gives you a lot of control over to

06:01apple and some manufacturers like bmw probably don't want to do that so this might be as good

06:05as it gets but let's hope they can figure out a better solution than that sort of boxy arrangement

06:10there so it's same story with android auto as well it sort of does this this boxy arrangement here too

06:18so yeah anyway now in terms of sound system you have a harman kardon branded sound system with am fm and

06:27dab digital radio it's a nice sound system and if you're paying this kind of money you kind of want

06:31a nice sound system as well that comes with it so that's all good to see ahead of the driver you've

06:35got a head-up display with augmented reality but it's one of these sort of cheaper sort of chintzy

06:40setups where the screen folds out it's not really like a proper setup which is fine you know it does the

06:45job but it's just not as not as nice to look at uh in my opinion now in terms of parking you've got

06:50front and rear parking sensors and a 360 camera i'll show you what that looks like there it is

06:56quality of that is pretty reasonable uh you can see the top down view there it's got the reversing

07:01assistant uh let's see what else we've got here okay so some wider panoramic views there as well

07:07with the 3d view as well to whip around the car back looks like yeah don't love that feature i don't

07:16know how that really works but a car wash view there as well to line up wheels when you're driving

07:20into a car wash so yeah pretty uh decent setup and this is what the horn sounds like

07:24now moving on to practicality and connectivity you've got a wireless phone charger up the top here

07:31two usb-c ports down here with the 12 volt outlet in terms of storing things uh it's kind of a

07:36common theme now for some reason with these electric cars you've got all of this space

07:40but barely any of it is covered so if you do need to store valuables you can see everything from

07:46outside the car the only spot you have is this tiny little sort of area here i do love that there's

07:51that little fabric thing there as well there's actually a fabric thing here on the steering wheel

07:54too just a cool little different design um this may look like it opens but it doesn't all it does is

08:00slide forwards and backwards so yeah from a storage point of view it's not great through the center

08:04there and then you have a actually pretty reasonably sized glove box there but no sunnies

08:10holders unfortunately you do have a camera up here for selfie mode so you can take pictures of

08:16yourself while you're in the car which is something just a little bit different and then on the

08:19comfort front you have dual zone automatic climate control heated seats and heated steering wheel

08:25as well in terms of comfort of the seats so uh fairly comfortable you've got the jcw seats here

08:32in the in the favored spec so they sort of hug you in nicely you've got a litany of adjustments

08:36both driver and front passenger are electrically adjustable so you can go forwards backwards your

08:41backrest can go forwards and backwards you can lift the front of the seat back of the seat you've

08:44got lumbar adjustments seat memory as well on the steering front steering is both tilts and reach

08:50adjustable now second row um not a huge amount of space here so not much knee room tow room isn't great

08:58uh headroom is reasonable so not an enormous suv uh probably just smaller family style stuff uh you've

09:05got two events down here with two usb-c charging ports matte pockets a center armrest with two cup

09:13holders there as well um yeah it would be nice if it was just a little bit bigger here with a bit more

09:19space but anyway um now does the window go all the way down let's find out so it's auto up and down

09:24not quite now let's talk cargo space so you've got power tailgate uh just under 500 liters to work

09:34with so this is reduced capacity uh beneath the internal combustion version because the electric

09:39motor here at the at the back of the vehicle uh and then under floor you've got some storage there

09:45for your cables which is good and then uh there's 12 volt outlet off to the side there if you want more

09:50space you can drop the second row but one thing i just noticed don't look at this

09:53some pretty not very good build quality there so um and then the other problem as well is you can't

09:59drop the second row from here as well you're going to go around the side to release that

10:04and you can drop this as well i mean that is the most convoluted system ever to drop a second row

10:12um yeah that is so frustrating anyway uh that expands the space to a little under 1500 liters

10:18now let's talk about battery and charging before we go for a spin so battery capacity is about 65

10:24kilowatt hours it's an ncm battery so it's a battery that contains nickel and that tends to mean that you

10:29don't really want to be charging it to 100 about 80 is the sweet spot for it on the charging front you

10:34can charge ac on three phase up to 11 kilowatts three phase ac charging up to 22 kilowatt is also

10:40supported with the right charger and then dc uh offers a max charging rate of about 130 kilowatts but an

10:47average at about 100 so okay but not amazing there in terms of those figures now in terms of your

10:52driving range just over 400 kilometers on the wltp cycle

10:57so we've just hit the road in the countryman the electric countryman so just as a reminder being an

11:05all-wheel drive this means it has two electric motors one sits on the front axle one sits on the

11:10rear axle so it just gives you a bit more surety on the road a bit more traction as you're driving as

11:16well so it just elevates that driving experience and just gives you a bit more pep too the only

11:20downside to that is that it uses more electricity because you're adding the weight of another motor

11:25and then you're also powering that motor so it all sort of ends up consuming a little bit more

11:29in terms of power outputs though just over 200 kilowatts of power and almost 500 unit meters of torque

11:35so what does that all mean in theory so if you punch the throttle gives you a nice push in the back

11:40it's nothing sort of over the top or outrageous but it feels sort of nice and brisk and moves along

11:46very sharply which is kind of what you want from an electric vehicle you don't want it being dull

11:50this sort of just gets up and moves which is good news and in terms of the economy i mentioned before

11:54that you pay a penalty there i was having a look at the official figure which sits at around the

12:0017 kilowatt hours per 100 kilometer mark here we're sitting at over 20 over the past 1700 k's so

12:07but it's pretty thirsty and if you have a look at some of the other competitors in this segment

12:11you're talking about efficiencies that are much closer to that sort of 15 mark so i think there's

12:17probably a bit of work to be done there on efficiency you're going to lose a little bit of

12:20that on low profile sportier tires and a sportier design as well so i think that is something that

12:25bmw can potentially work on the one thing bmw does really well when you put it into drive you can

12:31actually put it into then b which is attached to drive with another sort of pull down of your drive

12:36selector that does single pedal driving so when that's engaged there's a really strong regen and

12:41then it goes all the way through to being stationary and they've just tuned it beautifully so it is

12:46really nice and smooth and it's my go-to when i'm driving like an electric bmw or mini product because

12:51it just works there's no complaints about it so um yeah definitely a good feature now in terms of the

12:57ride it's got a firmer edge to it feels sort of sporty which is what you sort of get from this vibe of

13:01this vehicle but it's not over the top and not too firm you do get a fair bit of road noise though so

13:07especially on these coarse chip roads we put it up against our calibrated sound meter if you do want

13:11to see how this compares to other cars that we've tested have a look at the link in the description

13:15below you just notice a bit of noise coming into the cabin so in terms of visibility you can see

13:20clearly down the front there uh this head-up display i'm just really not a fan of it it sort of

13:24sits in a weird position so my steering wheel when it's lifted up kind of blocks it and you can adjust

13:29the height of it and stuff but we just prefer to have it up the top there uh the wing mirrors are

13:33nice and decent so i can see right down the side of the car visibility out the back is okay but not

13:38amazing it's quite a narrow window so it is just a little tricky to see but you've got all the parking

13:42sensors and stuff to make low speed maneuvers pretty straightforward okay let's see what the ride is

13:48like and what the body control is like when the speed picks up so we test body control on our sine

13:53waves at 130 which is the maximum speed limit here in australia gives us a good idea of

13:59how the package comes together oh that feels fantastic very nice so while this car doesn't

14:05have adaptive damping has frequency selective damping which means that as the suspension

14:09goes over different frequencies of vibration on the road it can adjust how firm it is and you can

14:14see there in that instance knows we're doing a consecutive sine wave and then it adjusts

14:19accordingly gives you that nice smooth ride with decent body control and in and around town it's

14:23actually quite nice as well it's not over the top or too rough just feels very composed now bumpy road

14:30time we do this at 90 k's an hour this is a terrible road a replica of a terrible road so

14:36gives us an idea of what this frequency selective damping is like

14:40yeah it feels nice very good and we've got a condensed sine wave here as well

14:47oh that is really really impressive yeah so it's got that sort of firmer edge to it but it's it's

14:54definitely not over the top and it's quite comfortable here especially on this terrible

14:58sort of road that we've got here feels much better than it does in the new x3 now drive modes

15:04really you've got these experiences if you go to go-kart makes it's a funny sound but it engages

15:12but gives you this different meter here so i've engaged that let's go for a drive around the track

15:17here we test all cars back to back in the same way to see what they feel like but i'm just curious to

15:23see whether this has the sportiness that it appears to have so

15:27a little bit of body roll there but this holds on nicely love the throttle response in this go-kart

15:38mode it's really nice and sharp

15:40oh very good this thing is moving along really nicely you can also enable like the sort of inducted noise as well if you're into that kind of thing

15:52but yeah this is moving along really nicely don't love the steering feel and i had this complaint with the new x3 as well that they've just kind of

15:59BMW used to be the masters of steering feel but they've just killed it

16:03so um this is kind of in the same boat don't get a great deal of steering feel which is a shame because it's quite a sporty little package

16:11you can see they've really focused on giving this some some pep and some sporty intention

16:18you know what i'd actually love to drive the internal combustion john cooper works version of this i think we'll try and organise that as well

16:24give it a bit of punch and our back straight this is hoofing along really nicely

16:28very good

16:30now time to test the semi-autonomous systems and we do this at 70 k's an hour on the three outer lanes of the bowl here

16:38so i want to see how willing it is to hold the vehicle within its lane so let's see how we go

16:50okay so assisted driving mode is active wait for the steering wheel to go green

16:54all right there it is there

16:59so looking good in this first lane uh BMW products are actually typically pretty good so jump over to the next lane and see what it's like up here

17:09all right wait for that to go green as well

17:15taking a while there we go okay so that's green

17:19holding itself really nicely there too okay now the challenge the outermost lane

17:26let's see how it performs up here

17:29all right wait for that to go green

17:33still waiting doesn't look like it's liking this much at all

17:43yeah it's not going to activate um yeah sometimes these systems i don't know you can see they're in the first two lanes for a little while to switch on but

17:53yeah no not liking us so pass in lane one and two but not for the third lane

17:59now time to do some performance testing so we'll pop this into go-kart mode

18:05and uh

18:07can't get over that sound uh we're gonna go zero to 100 and then all the way through to 120 so we can get our

18:1280 to 120 overtaking time

18:14we'll come back and do a stop from 100 as well so

18:18okey dokey here we go

18:20very nice and strong off the line the official time is a little over five seconds so there's 100

18:32and 120

18:34all righty zero to 100 5.66 seconds 80 to 120 3.89 so the 3.89 is a pretty good number

18:44there so it shows you that that mid-range overtaking pace is uh is pretty reasonable

18:50by the way this is what the mini sound drives like sounds like rather

18:54quite funny i'm gonna switch that off

19:05okay time to do a stop from 100

19:09i'm sure the phone doesn't go flying all righty so

19:12let's see what it feels like

19:15all right so this is a good indication what the tire and brake package is like

19:22uh so 100 to 0 uh 2.72 seconds 38.01 meters so

19:29uh not too bad sort of between 35 and 40 is where you want to be

19:33um all righty let's see how quick it goes in reverse here we go

19:37oh that's nice accelerates hard so 42 kilometers 43 kilometers an hour

19:44so the mini countryman what do we reckon um look i'm keen to drive the internal combustion version

19:49uh this being the full electric one i think it does all the full electric stuff really well

19:54where it's let down a little bit is battery capacity and range i just think it needs a slightly

19:59bigger battery with a bit more driving range just because the the 400 odd kilometers it says it does

20:04when it's cold like this you're really not going to be achieving anywhere near that so

20:07uh giving yourself an extra buffer with a bigger battery would fix that but

20:10outside of that i love the interior i love the tech i just love the way that it's all laid out and

20:14it's just completely different to everything else on the road so let me know what you reckon have

20:18you had a look at one of these and did you go for the internal combustion version or did you end up

20:22going for the electric one let me know in the comment section below if you did enjoy this video

20:27please make sure you like it and you share it with your mates as well but until next time take it easy

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