Favorite SE reviews

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insightman said:
Maybe I've become more range-anxious because I'm watching the Apple TV series, Long Way Up, where Ewan McGregor and his buddy are trying to ride their borrowed prototype Harley-Davidson Livewire electric motorcycles from the southern tip of South America to LA. The problems they experience charging those bikes--and their 2 borrowed prototype Rivian support trucks--are, to put it mildly, significant. It's a good thing it's possible to charge a Rivian by towing it.
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All three Long Way series are brilliant, and it’s almost comical to see how far video technology had progressed in just 14 years. While I can’t imagine much has changed with charging infrastructure from Ushuaia through Mexico since 2017, the charging networks in Canada and the US have propagated to the smallest settlements and roadside stops in every state and most provinces. I would guess the number of charging stations has increased fivefold in five years.
 
insightman said:
The problems they experience charging those bikes--and their 2 borrowed prototype Rivian support trucks--are, to put it mildly, significant.
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I watched Long Way Up, it was really good. It certainly made the Rivian R1T and Harley-Davidson LiveWire look good. But it's hardly a fair comparison to normal trips considering they were driving through some wildly remote areas of South America. They were even having trouble with the Level 1 charging they were trying to get. And the charging infrastructure has grown a lot since the series was shot in 2019.
 
I like this guy (Scott Rods). I only watch the MINI videos. He and his wife traded their ICE MINI Cooper S for an SE.

Test Driving An Electric Mini And A Mini JCW - First Impressions From A V8 Petrolhead!


Electric Mini One Year Review - How Much Has It Cost?
 
Here's an entertaining video i just found.

Review: 2022 Mini Cooper SE EV - Best ke electric Mini?
 
Hatch said:
Here's an entertaining video i just found.

Review: 2022 Mini Cooper SE EV - Best ke electric Mini?
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I enjoyed hearing how the SE turned the reviewer into a hooligan driver, just like it did to me after 20 years of hypermiling my gen-1 Honda Insights (caveat: I was a hooligan in my two Honda CRX Si cars before the Insights). This guy's enthusiasm is infective!

His perfect question: MINI, how do you increase the range without making it heavier and less fun?

Wow! $5 grand (Malaysian) for a 3-phase 11 kW EVSE! I wonder what a 7.5 kW (32-Amp) EVSE costs there?

When getting ready for my SE in 2019, I misread the specs and rushed out and bought a used commercial 48-Amp ClipperCreek EVSE, believing I'd be charging at 11 kW--then I read later specs to discover 11 kW is only with 3-phase AC EVSEs (which the US SE's J1772 connector doesn't support). Now I have to drag around a thicker cord than on my old 40-Amp EVSE to pump 30.833 Amps into my SE.
 
teslarati97 said:
I just finished watching the hour long video of Tom Moloughney sharing how he got started into the world of EVs. About 2/3 of the video is MINI-E -> 1 Series ActiveE -> i3 -> i3s
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Back in 2009 I wished I could rent an apartment in New Jersey so I could apply to lease a MINI-E, but I came up with my hairbrained scheme too late and they were all snapped up by lucky people like Tom Moloughney. Happily, eleven years later, I was finally driving my own MINI Electric--one that BMW can't take away and send to the crusher like they did to the bereft Tom.

Edit: As you know, BMW didn't send Tom Moloughney to the crusher, just his MINI-E. I have a MINI-E starting my slide show that illustrates how electric MINIs weren't supposed to be saddled with a fake, ICE-inspired hood scoop.
 
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teslarati97 said:
Just use an ad blocker extension for your browser and disable as many ads as possible.
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I mostly watch on Chrome for iOS, which isn’t ideal. Pihole takes care of most crap trying to get in, but I haven’t delved much beyond setting it up and whitelisting most of the the background calls from my various home automation spiesappliances.
 
insightman said:
Here's a video I've posted many times (I guess that makes it a favorite). It shows a guy driving a MINI Cooper SE 177 miles on a single charge. Still, after watching it why am I planning a 275-mile trip with charging stops every 50 miles? Because I'm not confident every charging station along my route will be working--or there will be a 3-hour line-up of people waiting to charge their EVs.



Maybe I've become more range-anxious because I'm watching the Apple TV series, Long Way Up, where Ewan McGregor and his buddy are trying to ride their borrowed prototype Harley-Davidson Livewire electric motorcycles from the southern tip of South America to LA. The problems they experience charging those bikes--and their 2 borrowed prototype Rivian support trucks--are, to put it mildly, significant. It's a good thing it's possible to charge a Rivian by towing it.
Click to expand...


Hmmm, should be possible to charge a Mini by towing it, too! Regen braking to the rescue. May not work if the car was driven until it stopped. A 30 minute tow at 50mph full regen should do an 80% charge.
I'm going to add a rope to my mobile charging kit.
 
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teslarati97 said:
I just finished watching the hour long video of Tom Moloughney sharing how he got started into the world of EVs. About 2/3 of the video is MINI-E -> 1 Series ActiveE -> i3 -> i3s.

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So GOOD! Everyone should make the time to watch this.
 
pictsidhe said:
Hmmm, should be possible to charge a Mini by towing it, too! Regen braking to the rescue. May not work if the car was driven until it stopped. A 30 minute tow at 50mph full regen should do an 80% charge.
I'm going to add a rope to my mobile charging kit.
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In the AppleTV+ series, "Long Way Up," Ewan McGregor and his buddy decide to ride a pair of electric Harley Davidson LiveWire motorcycles up from the bottom of South America in 2019. They convinced Rivian to rush production of the first two pickups from the factory to use as support vehicles for their trip.

Unsurprisingly, they discovered it wasn't easy to find places to charge their electric vehicles in rural South America. The Rivians had to be tow-charged more than once, but the Harleys couldn't do that. The Harleys with their much smaller batteries got by with the weak charging sources they discovered along the route.

We'll all be interested to hear how well your tow-charging experiment works and what kind of rope you use.
 
insightman said:
Here's a video I've posted many times (I guess that makes it a favorite). It shows a guy driving a MINI Cooper SE 177 miles on a single charge.
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Wait, I became a hypermiler by being on track to getting 174 miles range on my SE? I wasn't even trying, I just kept it under 60 mph in green mode.

***********************************
Sep 20, 2022 at 18:27 ** 83.174°F ** Wind: 4.505 mph from N ** Humidity: 0.69% ** Driven: 71.5 Mi ** Start-Batt: 100% ** End-Batt: 59% ** Mi / kWh: 6.03 ** GOM Reading: 60 Mi ** Range Left: 102.82 Mi ** Total Range (From 100% charge): 174.32 Mi ** Total Range (From 100% charge): 174.267 Mi
 
This was an around the neighborhood tank charge, so I left it in Sport. I’ve done 30 km so far and it shows 85%, even though I’ve absentmindedly left departure precon on all week and I haven’t been on any sort of schedule. But it’s also the first time I’ve remembered to reset the trip meter to zero before plugging in, so I’ll finally get to use @GvilleGuy ’s shortcut! I fully expect I can get an easy 200 km (124 miles) in Sport mode and “normal” spirited local driving in this cooler weather.
 
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