2022 MINI Cooper SE Electric: I don’t think I’ve ever been this ANXIOUS…. transcript

let's go oh yeah instant talk baby oh yeah oh [Applause] oh i have never been more anxious in my entire life than today you see behind me is the mini cooper se it's a pretty cool full ev hatchback that gets about kilometers of range now that makes sense in a country like france where you're in paris you need a small little ev 160 k's will take you to the the mullen rouge and back but here in australia i can't get to the bloody shops without running out of range and then worrying am i going to get home in fact i've come to bmw which is actually the closest ev charger to my home and i live in like central melbourne i've driven 20 minutes the car's on 60 battery and i'd like i'm worried i won't make it home and it's going to take hours to charge the charging network in australia sucks i'm going to insert a clip here so you can see what it's been like for me so jacob what's it like uh trying to charge up a car in australia we're not hold for 25 minutes been on hold for 25 minutes i got places to be man people to see you got things to do i got things to do man and my nose is huge but we're not here to talk about that we're here to talk about this the mini cooper se some market or actually only the uk cause of the mini cooper electric like it's a pretty cool car i'm gonna take you all around it we'll show you the exterior the interior what it's like to drive some people call this a true hot hatch i will give you my opinion on that we're also going to launch it using my specialist timing here and then i'll end on should you buy a mini cooper s e or a mini cooper se multi-tone roof as this trim is called bit weird all right let's get straight into it now before we get into the review i'm actually going to explain why we're filming it like this no joke this really is like the closest charger to my home it's at the bmw headquarters which is pretty convenient because i get free charging the annoying thing is that one of the chargers the mini one doesn't work uh so we've had to use the bmw we spent like 25 minutes on the phone it was absolutely ridiculous so the car's gonna be framed like this for a while it just has to be because otherwise i'm not getting home now one of the main reasons you're going to spend 70 000 australian dollars on a mini cooper se is because of its looks it is a very good looking car there is no doubt about that very very stylish don't know how i feel about this ombre roof with its blue and blue and black look it's a bit extra for me but i can understand why some people would get it so what do you get as standard where you get full led lights they are super duper bright and they look really cool too uh mini badge here you've got fake hood scoop here because guess what underneath here there is a real engine not let me show you so in most electric cars you would find storage under here at least most normal electric cars but never the bmw's it seems because there is no storage space under here i'm pretty sure you've got your you know your motor at the front and whatever but yeah what ah you're not gonna fit your suitcase in there my friends ow oh it's actually kind of cool i like that electric can't electrocute myself bro electricity can't electrocute electricity am i right what's different about this from any other mini cooper well it's the frontier you can see a lot of it is blocked up for aerodynamic purposes you don't need to call any engine so you block it up makes it more aero makes sense and as you can see here there is the s badge here this is the se so i guess it's got comparable performance to a standard cooper s you're just spending like 30 grand more but who cares right no difference coming to the rest of the side you've got these optional tentacle wheels here they call them and they do look pretty cool i like how they're blacked out they're 17 inches and they're wrapped in pirelli cintaratos never heard of them in my life but you probably have blacked out mirror caps here it's pretty uh bougie you've also got oh look at that door handles but they do have kayla center and go of course this is the mini yours trim which is like top of the range trim as i said this is the mini cooper se miniors multi-tone roof that is literally the name of the trim and uh yeah it's a coupe by the way so it does have frameless windows here and it's pretty damn cool i'll admit again i'm sorry about the framing of these shots uh as i said we were really on the phone for like 25 30 minutes just to find out that one of the charges uh wasn't working so we have to keep it in this position it's going to look a little bit weird but whatever it's still it works okay it works so at the back we have these really cool union jack tail lights i like them a lot they look really sick and you can buy them together it makes the full uh uk flag go to the uk we've also got a roof spoiler here we've got blacked out badging i really like this this is the electric badge so that you know that this is the ev but otherwise it's a very good looking car i don't know though if it's you know if you should buy one of these just because of its looks as i said this thing is 70 000 you could spend quite a bit less maybe like seven grand or something and get yourself a rear-wheel drive tesla model three and then you're getting about two and a half times the range a bit more practicality and reliability is gonna be the same because they're electric cars anyway so i don't know it's a bit of a tough sell but let me know in the comment section down below what do you think about the the looks of this car it's a very good looking car but would that pull you over the edge over a tesla model 3 i'm unconvinced let's talk about the interior so what's the interior like well it's pretty awesome and it's one of the reasons that you would actually buy the mini cooper se and it's because you get a pretty premium luxury special interior so there are things to like but things not to like let's start with the things i like first of all soft touch absolutely everywhere it feels super duper premium in here and it feels like a million bucks like seriously on the on par of bmw of course who own mini but uh yeah you can see where the inspiration came from you've got some cool touches here like some toggle switches down here some of them do ev stuff over a standard mini as you would expect this one here is for your regen and this one here is for changing your sport mode or into green or green plus where it turns off your air conditioning and i have been doing that to save range that's how much range anxiety i've got in this car uh but you've also got some other toddler switches up here which change the lighting things like that and it's just a really sleek cool layout i like it a lot what's not to like is that you're using a older infotainment display or older infotainment system kind of like the bmw idrive 6 system they're now up to eight which means it's fine um it's a bit laggy you still get like a i drive e controller down here it's almost the same not quite as ergonomic as before but it's a fine system you do get wireless apple carplay though though no wireless android auto so if you have an android phone you're not bougie enough to have a mini sorry you've also got a storage area here it's not really a storage area actually it's just your wireless charger which would be great but if you have any sort of flagship phone like for me i've got the iphone max 13 whatever if i try and put it in there just no chance in hell it's an older system they had in like the bmw x2 in fact they still have it in the bmw x2 i mean at least you get a wireless charger but you're gonna have a pretty small phone to get it in there and then you've got no storage though it does lift up you've got storage space there couple of cupholders look i've got my obligatory water bottle fits a couple of cup holders in there absolutely fine you've got a storage area up front for your phone a usb c port a usb a port and look a little 12 volt socket so plenty of io as they call it let's put that down there and there you go then here we have a glove box which is a pretty decent size like that a lot the dorbians are tiny really really small you're not getting a water bottle in there now as i said this is the mini yours trim which means that it's premium and you do get these awesome seats here they call them lounge seats they've got the union jack in the headrest they look really cool and they feel super duper comfy again really premium would be a lot more premium than the seats that you get for example in a base model tesla model 3 so i guess that's a good thing you've also got a harman kardon sound system which does sound it's very good up in front of you you get a digital instrument cluster it's pretty average and also it's on an angle in every single mini and it does my head in it's like slightly tilted to the left which is a bit annoying for someone like me who notices those kinds of things but it does have a pretty cool layout ev specific of course up front you get a heads up display which is really annoying because if you have the steering wheel in the wrong position for example i usually like to have my steering wheels a bit higher then all of a sudden i can't actually see the heads-up display so that kind of sucks speaking of steering wheel it is a very nice steering wheel it's uh one of the i guess older style bmw steering wheels but nothing wrong with that it feels super nice to hold on to on the hands you do have buttons to control a lot of things but they feel plasticky and pretty horrible to be totally honest with you and also everything in here is a circle and i mean everything from the air vents to the door handles to the speaker housing to this infotainment display which i didn't mention actually has lighting and it's dynamic lighting so for example if i change the temperature it like moves around it's kind of cool i don't know oh it's a lot of beeps and oh anyway what's it like in the back seats let's go let's talk about that now even though this is a sleek two-door you do get back seats so to get into them you reach around you grab that slide the seat forward just did leg day and i'm in a lot of pain oh my gosh oh my gosh it's not it's not it's not the difficulty of getting in the back it's just my legs being poop so once you're back here the seats are super duper comfy we can slide this back god damn it jacob why do you have your seat so far back can you just pull the seat forward so if the person in the front seat makes compromises you can have people sit in the back although it's you know you will have to make compromises but it is very very comfy back here i'll give you that you get two seats back here which is kind of enough no no in all seriousness it's actually pretty damn good back here i i wouldn't mind sitting back here but the front person might mind because their legs are going to be on the dash so it is what it is fam let's talk about practicality now the mini is not just mini in name it is mini in size thankfully the ev doesn't actually lose any internal space because the battery's so small so maybe that's a win there i guess but yeah it doesn't have much space regardless so you might be able to fit a full suitcase in there and that's about it you do get underfloor storage and that's where your charging cables live this one is your like home emergency trickle charger the other one here is when you're out and about and you have access to faster charging options yeah it's not a huge amount of space but you can put down the back seats using these fun little plugs here if i'm if i'm tugging if i'm yanking on your chain and then yeah you get plenty of space if you do that so while we were just filming the b-roll then i just saw this really cool feature so yes if you put it like that the seats are all the way back you're not going to fit a full suitcase in there i don't think it'd be real struggle but you can lift up this tab here pull it back means the back seat people aren't going to be having a great time but it means you get quite a lot more room in the back so that's pretty cool spec time now of course this doesn't have an engine but we'll still pop the hood anyway under here is a fake cover as we showed earlier but it doesn't really matter it does have a pretty awesome setup it actually comes from the bmw i3 the old outdated but amazingly weird bmw that i never have driven but i wish i had you've driven it yeah where my test drive really yeah oh how was it yeah really cool everything was very sustainable very stable so it's powered by a 32.6 kilowatt hour battery that's about half of the size that you'll find in most other evs now at least full evs so 135 kilowatt of power 270 newton meters of torque that's actually quite a lot of course this thing does weigh a little bit more than a standard mini because of the batteries and whatnot so you get about the same performance as a mini cooper s but that doesn't mean it's a slouch it's actually quite quick especially when you consider things like instant torque but we'll come back to that in a moment now charging is a pretty average story i guess it's kind of similar to pretty much every other ev on the market at least offered from bmw at the moment so you have an ac charge current at max 11 kilowatt if you use dc charging it's 50 kilowatt although in australia it's so hard to find a dc charge as i said there is none around my house this is the fastest i can find so we're doing 11 kilowatt hour charging we came here at 60 battery and now it's been no joke about an hour what are we at we're at 70 so yeah it's not the quickest out there if you're gonna be charging this you're going to be charging this at home and if you do so you can use a it comes with a like an emergency charger that you can plug into your home but really bmw sorry mini wants you to install a wall box in your home to plug it up and charge it up okay so now we're going to launch the mini cooper se it's not entirely fair because we're both sitting in the car but many do claim that this will do 000 in about 7.1 seconds but what will it actually do we're actually in a slight decline here so that should kind of balance out the fact that we're both pork chops what's your guess i guess that's a good question i think i think we'll do it in 7.4 seconds i think 7.98 ooh oddly specific all right let's go hey foot on the break no well i don't even know why let's go oh yeah instant talk baby oh yeah oh oh oh that's better yeah i just took that took me a second 0-100 in 7.05 seconds i'll take that man that's pretty good slight decline but heavy boys all right let's get into how this thing drives when you're not being an idiot by the way bro that's a nice hoodie you're wearing thanks man i actually got it from a really cool store called matt brand cars we don't even know we don't know the name of the website what's the website i'll put it up here now all right so here we are driving the i was about to say bmw the mini i'm so tired bro freudian all right it happens to the best of half of the best of us the mini cooper s e s for s e for electric i've got the windows down by the way because i'm too scared to do it on the air con because we're in the country i don't know if we'll make it home but let's give this thing some source oh sprightly it's decent but it slows down once it gets to about a hundred so this thing is electronically limited to 150 kilometers an hour not that you'll i could ever be going 150 kilometers an hour in this thing unless you're on the autobahn but you'll run out of range pretty damn quick if you do that maybe it's too loud okay i'm gonna risk it for the biscuit so actually my range just dropped four kilometers so i guess that's all right we just drove out here like for the car was at 90 we're now at 75 we've been driving for maybe 20 minutes and i've been driving in green mode i put the car in green to make the car more efficient and so no joke this car has just given me a lot of range anxiety that i haven't experienced in other evs because i've got 450 60 kilometers of range like this is always ever present in my mind like will i make it home can you tell by the way the review's going yeah but let's talk about how it drives otherwise so when you're just cruising along the highway you have fixed dampers which means that they're not adaptive but it's actually pretty damn comfortable definitely on the sporty side yeah but it's good the steering itself is pretty heavy no matter what mode you're in when you put it into sport mode that means it does add quite a lot of weight to the steering wheel but in a good way and i'll show you what i mean when we get to saucy corner this is actually the original saucy corner you haven't seen it yet no we go to saucy quarter too usually saucy cherry popping the saucy cherry no joke i'm filming back in the old location which i don't like as much because there's you know more traffic but that's because this wouldn't make it no joke to where we were filming where we usually film you make it one way it make it one way wouldn't make it back so that kind of sucks but anyway i'm going on about the range but that's because that's kind of the biggest drawback of this car yeah in terms of power though you put your foot down it goes it really does go it's a very quick car so let's put the car into there's three modes sport mid and green there's also a green plus which turns off air con it's pretty funny let's put the car into sport mode literally has a go-kart for its icon and the range dropped it did just drop it just knows it pre-empts yeah it's just so surreal oh yeah that we're going quite quick and all you can hear is the chair kind of creaking yeah i know which is a good thing actually because it's very quiet within here you can thank the fact that this does kind of have like luxury car underpinnings and you've also got nice soft materials everywhere that helps to soak up a lot of the road noise and when you put it into sport mode the accelerator just goes like one to one meaning like you put your foot down a little bit and like it just goes this thing handles pretty amazingly well you'll see a lot of reviewers not actually taking this thing on the twisties because they can't make it out there and really that's not what this car is for let me tell you it's pretty fun on the twisties wow it's very flat as well you can thank the battery for that because in the floor so you know this car's center of gravity is really low lower than any other mini but let me slow down here to give a bit of space between me and the car in front and there's a few twisties here so it's pretty amazing the wheels don't scrabble i'm not sure if there's a diff like a limited slip diff between them but i wouldn't be surprised because it puts down power really well like it's genuinely very impressive how this thing drives and we did the m240i recently and that was amazing but this the fact that this still feels good compared to that yeah that's true yeah we literally just came out of that yeah swapped it over hats off mini bmw really no that's not fair i'm sure they have like mini specific but you know they had a meeting about it they had they had a corporate meeting about it we know that much zoom chat yeah oh this is saucy corner we're coming up just as you go on a friend it's time so we gotta come to a start this saucy corner isn't quite as good as last order so four second but it's just yeah it's a it's a corner of source right you ready all right here we go this is the first corner oh oh oh i felt the back come around there a little bit yeah under and over it was a bit of under an oversteer that was quite weird look this thing is actually quite a lot of fun to drive it's holding that line really well that's impressive wow that is impressive okay all right all right i i think i get it i think i get this car coming it's like when are you going to be out here though yeah well you're not because you're going to be scared to get home it's really good though i think i think i've figured this car out though to me this car is the perfect city car it's the it's the car you have when you're in like paris right it's when you want to go to point a point b shops in style in comfort it is quite comfortable it's just that range it really it really ruins it for me you know like 180 kilometers on a good day i don't know man i've been driving this car pretty civil and in green mode most of the time not right now not right now though and you know like it's i don't know handling is very good though it does it does i know it's so cliche it's disgustingly cliche but it does handle like it's on rails people call it a hot hatch and again i want to reiterate that that is ridiculous it doesn't have the emotion of a hot hatch i don't feel like i'm you know like this fighting with the car yeah or like doing much it's almost like on easy mode because it handles so well thanks to the battery being low um the regen braking is what's stopping me there i i have not put my foot on the brake once because the regen is is really good i don't know man i'm in two minds i'm in two mines this car is good very very good drives amazingly well but you don't get to drive it for very long and there's a lot of anxiety with it i'm now down to 98 kilometers like that probably two kilometers there and back is just because of the way we were driving it's used about 15 k's of range yeah that's not awesome and now this chair creaking is starting to annoy me all right let's get into my final thoughts all right so what are my final thoughts on the mini cooper sc i think early on in my career i made the mistake of being like i don't like it because it's got these floors therefore no one will like it there is definitely a market for this car it is just for people who are doing you know short trips you can't go for example an hour out of melbourne you won't make it home i'm not even joking like there's like there'll be nowhere to charge you're not going to make it home so this is the kind of car that if you live in a small area and you want to go ev you want a really good looking car and you're happy to spend the money it's kind of perfect for that but for me i would just go and buy myself a tesla model 3. personally that's just me but let me know what you guys think of the mini cooper s e would you buy one would you spend the 70 grand to get yourself the mini cooper s e mini yours [Applause] multi-tone roof as this one is called let me know in the comment section just below that like button thank you guys very much for watching and as always i don't know why i did that i'll see you next week ciao for now