The Temperature Isn't The Only Thing Rising...

So is the range of the MINI-E. Now that (hopefully) the cold weather is behind us, so is the punishing effects the cold temperatures and the heater use has on the range of our cars. Today I drove 91 miles and still had an estimated range of 35 miles left to go. It was a leisurely drive at speeds around 40 mph, the kind of driving the MINI-E loves most so I expected to have good results, but a total range of 126 miles? I haven't seen my range that good since last September.

I was happy to read that the BMW ActiveE, the successor to the MINI-E will have a thermal management system that will warm or cool the battery pack to keep it at optimum operating efficiency. This is a feature that is dearly missed on the MINI-E and some of the other pioneers have been very critical of the car because of this omission. The reduced range in the winter months has caused some of the MINI-E drivers to lose faith in the car and not drive as much as they would like to. There are others, myself included who just adjusted their driving to accommodate the 20 or 30 less miles per charge that the car was getting. Then there were others like Jim McLaughlin (MINI-E # 458) who use a automobile cabin heater to pre-heat the cabin and thus the batteries. Jim has continued to record single-charge range well over 100 miles  for the entire winter, even when the temperature was down under 20 degrees. To me this is good news because it proves that a sophisticated thermal management system will allow the car to travel roughly the same distance regardless of the outside temperature.