I saw this cool article in USA Today and wanted to pass it along to anyone who is interested.
http://content.usatoday.com/communit...ric-car-wave/1

 

I wonder how MINI selected these people? Was there a cattle call I missed?

 

Chiming in with some MINI E love.

The MINI E was unveiled at the 2008 LA Auto Show.

Prospective lessees were asked to apply for a MINI E lease in two US markets.

You can find out more about the project here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_E

Worth mentioning that BMW/MINI just expanded the European MINI E program. Clearly it's gaining traction(!).

 

I was hot to try it, though at the time, I didn't realize that a few months later my wife would be pregnant and that would eventually rule it out, thanks to the loss of the back seat. But the program was limited to LA here in CA so that was that. I suspect, as it moves forward, they will see better performance using more efficient (longer range, lighter, faster charge) batteries that are already becoming available. The MINI-E was saddled with not the best performing battery out there. Though what I've read lately suggests BMW is focusing on hybrid sooner than electric as far as mass market distribution goes...

 

The MINI-E is really a fantastic car, I've been driving one for the past 16 months now and have nearly 43,000 miles on it. I'm not sure where you got the bad information about the car being "saddled with not the best performing battery out there", the Li-ion pack used is extremely reliable and I haven't had any degradation issues at all yet. The one critiszm that could be made is the car doesn't have an active thermal management system. The passive system is inadequate in the winter when it is really cold so the range is reduced.

BMW has plans for both fully electric and hybrid vehicles and they are actually focusing more on fully electric cars and have started an entire electric car division. Next spring/summer they will introduce the BMW ActiveE, EV and pt 700 of them in service in the US. Here are some links for information:

http://www.bmwusa.com/Standard/Conte...s/ActiveE.aspx

http://activeemobililty.blogspot.com/