Charge up the... MINI E

NO matter what you make of the MINI, the version I've just been lucky enough to drive has one pressing problem. You can't actually buy it.

The MINI E, for all its good looks and sporty stance, isn't going to be hitting showrooms any time soon, because it's an experimental exercise to see whether Britain's car buyers like electric cars. This isn't a normal road test. It's test driving the future!

It's just a shame I have to declare an interest before even getting behind the wheel; I own one of the original, rather smaller Minis, which means I should hate BMW's bloated, cramped cover version. But I don't - I test drove a petrol-powered Cooper last year and found it instantly likeable, despite the cartoonish dials on its dashboard. Think of it as a baby Beemer rather than a classic car ripoff and you'll soon warm to it.

It's much the same story with the volt-powered version, which actually feels far more car-like to drive than it really ought to. If anything it feels quicker off the line than its petrol-powered counterpart - electric power's instant - and although you can feel weight of the E's batteries in the corners, it's not something you immediately notice. The only thing you'll have to get used to is the engine braking, which is easily the most powerful I've experienced on any car. At one roundabout, I pulled up safely without touching the brakes.

But the real killer with this car is the back seat, which goes from being a bit cramped in the petrol Cooper to being non-existent because it's where the batteries and gadgets live. There have been two-seater MINIs before, but the last one, the GP, replaced them with a roll cage so you'd enjoy it at Silverstone. On the other hand you won't enjoy the E on the racetrack, but that's only because with a 100 mile range you'll never get there in the first place.

The MINI E makes as a stylish, low cost city car, but as it's a limited run experiment BMW won't reveal how much it actually cost to make it, although it's been whispered each car cost as much as £25,000 to make.

It shows that electric cars aren't the milk floats you might expect them to be, but there's still a long way to go before we're all driving them.

As published in The Champion on August 11, 2010