Hello all -

I have a 2018 Countryman SE All4 E (hybrid) and when I got it, I would see ~18 miles per charge.

6 years later I'm now seeing no more than ~12 miles/charge, so I've lost 33% of the value of the hybrid option.

Questions for the group:
1) has anyone had success reconditioning their MINI hybrid battery - I see that it's an easy option for Toyota Prius etc, but what about MINI/BMW design?
2) the warranty is 8 years/80000 miles and I'm below both. What constitutes a "failure" such that MINI would be required to replace the battery? Anyone have experience with MINI on this question?

Thanks

 

From the warranty I found online (this was the 2023 version but I imagine it's the same):

Due to its inherent technical design, the high-voltage lithium-ion battery’s capacity will decrease over time and with use. If an authorized MINI dealer’s capacity check concludes that the net battery capacity is less than 70 percent of its original nominal value when it was new, this level of capacity loss is considered excessive.

Do you have a copy of your warranty in your glove box?

 

Do you see a reported loss in the battery capacity? Seems like you could be eligible for help as long as you can prove your lost range is the battery's fault.

 

I thought they were only EPA rated for electric power at 12 miles when new?

 

It went up over time, but for 2018, yes that's true. However if your habits always put you at a certain level above EPA and that goes down with no other changes, than it would indeed suggest lost capacity. You'd just need to show the battery capacity having gone down.

I can consistently get above 31mpg on the highway with my 2017 S ALL4 even at 140k, so if that dropped noticeably, I would start investigating possible mechanical causes for the lower gas mileage.

 

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I suggest buying a EV charger that measures how much energy is delivered to the car. Then drive until the battery is fully discharged (empty) and plug in and allow to fully recharge and see how many kWh the charger delivers to the car. The car battery is rated for 7.6 kWh capacity. The warranty threshold is 70% of rated capacity, so a full charge should take at least 7.6 x 0.70 = 5.32 kWh

In my case, my 2018 Countryman SE was only taking about 4.0 kWh per charge, which resulted in only about 10 miles of electric driving range. I took the car to the dealer and showed him photographic data from my EV charger and screen shots of the cars dashboard to document the issue. They had to call in a regional specialist from BMW to inspect the battery. This required basically taking apart the whole underside of the car, removing and then dissecting apart the battery pack. They discovered that one of the 5 cells in the battery was bad. Had to order a new battery from Germany. Mine was covered as a warranty replacement. They can only ship the battery by boat (not in a plane), so the waiting time is about a month before it can be fixed.