I'm about to put in an order for an SE and was talking to a guy who test drove one a few months ago (with his wife driving). He is a big Mini fan, but not an "EV person". He was warning me that the acceleration on the SE was too powerful for the car and that it was too touchy and "nauseating". My question for you all who have SEs is...how true is that? Is he just not familiar with EVs? Does he just not like how his wife drives? Could it have been the regen and they're just not used to that? What are your thoughts? A bit of background for me: This will be my first Mini, but our other car is a RAV4 Prime with some very nice torque on it, so we're used to that EV acceleration.
Too torque y? On what planet? I had a 2002 Cooper S with the supercharger. 165 ponies. I almost never left a light or stop sign with less than 3/4 throttle. I drove it in freezing rain and didn’t really lift the throttle. The DSC was amazing. Keep your foot in it and steer. I love my new MINI Cooper SE. It has better acceleration than the old 2002 ICE and yes that comes from the torque of electricity. It is wonderful and very easily modulated. Frankly, I would wonder if the fellow offering such a condemnation has some sort of negative agenda. Does he work for an Oil and Gas outfit? Sent from my iPad using Inside EVs
Given that the feeling was 'nauseating' I'm willing to bet it was from the regen and torque. When I was first getting the hang of regen my wife commented on it feeling jerky. The people who have driven my car (and don't have electric experience) have struggled with the 'back and forth' at first since the SE doesn't coast like an ICE car. I wouldn't be worried about it, I was pretty good by the end of the first week and my wife hasn't made a comment since.
Oh dear, give me a break. Yes to all of your questions. And about your RAV4, we have a Honda CRV and every time I drive it instead of the Mini, I expect it to slow down when I let up on the gas. My wife equates it to driving a golf cart. You control the "Torque" with the accelerator pedal (still think of it as a gas pedal). I love the Torque, just don't use it when turning.
My test drive left my family feeling nauseous. I am pretty sure it was a combination of the regen and the new car smell. I don’t think it was the pure acceleration but as someone else said the ‘back and forth’. My wife took a lot of convincing after the test drive before she agreed that we could get the car. Besides the nausea, she didn’t like how the rear view mirror obstructed her vision and the kids felt a little claustrophobic on the back seat. I am not to worried as keeping it in low regen will solve that problem. It won’t be like the Prime as that doesn’t have one peddle driving like the the SE or many other EVs. Honestly a Prime and a SE would be my ideal garage, but I don’t need two new cars at the moment and the one that needs replacing more is my commuter instead of the family car. That and I don’t feel like hunting unicorns or paying $5k over MSRP.
Sounds like a petrol head trying to talk you out of an EV. Your buddy would really hate a performance Tesla. If you don’t like the torque, just drive in green mode. The instant torque is what sold us during the test drive. Well, that and the seven roundabouts near the dealer.
LOL!!! If you can't find an SE to test drive, go drive a Mini Cooper S and a BMW i3s. The regular i3 is pretty close too. The Mini S will have a lot more understeer than the SE and the rear feels lighter. The SE handles better but overall, it feels very similar to an S handling wise and exactly the same for visibility. The i3s power delivery is pretty much the same as the SE but the handling is different. The i3s is RWD and the tires are super narrow so any kind of unevenness in the road will make the car wander a bit. You get the instant torque and the amount of torque delivery is the same as the SE.
The problem is the driver not the car. EVs have instant torque and that means you don’t just mash the “gas” pedal in normal driving like you may have had to in an ice car to get meaningful acceleration. But the biggest difference is that they don’t coast when you come all the way off the pedal: instead that activates regen braking. So it’s akin to someone in an ICE car stomping on the gas pedal and then stomping on the brake pedal. That would get nauseating quickly. If you want to coast as you would in an ICE car you just take your foot partially off the gas pedal. If you feel something similar to braking you came off too far and have gone past the coasting point to regen braking. On the mini when the power needle points to the “ready” indicator the car is coasting. If it dips down below that you are using regen braking. It takes time to get used to it but basically you need to learn to be more gentle and precise with your right foot. Once you get used to this “one pedal driving” you won’t want to go back to a gas car and have to do the pedal dance between gas and brake. This is one of the reasons we have our Mini, I was so used to one pedal driving from our Tesla that getting into my wife’s Kia Soul and finding it didn’t stop when I came off the gas was disconcerting! I also started realizing how wasteful braking is, I mean, you get nothing back in the tank and just chew through your brakes. It seems so comically bad now. And mashing the gas and having the transmission kick down and then the revs build up and then drop again as the car moves up a gear also seems laughably ancient. And believe me when I say I was the Jeremy Clarkson “poweeeeer!” type who loved my v8’s and though EVs were golf carts. It was a test drive many years ago in the first Chevy Volt (of all things) that changed my mine about electric drive. Once you get in a Tesla or other similar performance EV the Mini won’t feel fast or too torque believe me, those things are on another planet…
I have a RAV4 Prime and a Mini SE in my garage. I agree with others' sentiments that driving the Mini smoothly took about a week to get use to. My wife and adult kids rarely drive the Mini, and I advise them to use the low regen setting. As for acceleration, the RAV4 has good acceleration, but the Mini can jump to the next level no matter how fast you're going. It's accentuated by the fact that it feels so much smaller than the RAV4 and the handling is so tight.
Adjusting your driving style to regen braking is not difficult. I had it smoothed out by the time I arrived home after picking up the car. When I did a previous test drive, the head mechanic at my dealer gave me a lot of helpful instruction.
I'm pretty much just echoing what others have already said, but, to be fair to the guy who warned you, I got a bit car sick through my first two days with the SE, and I've never gotten car sick as the driver in any ICE car, hybrid, or Tesla. As others have noted, this was less a function of the acceleration and more a function of the SE's aggressive power regeneration, which abruptly decelerates the car as you lift off the power. I must admit that I started to doubt my decision to buy the SE through those first two days (I bought mine without first test-driving an SE because no test drive units were available in my area), but once I got the hang of modulating the throttle, I absolutely fell in love with the car. If I were a wiser, more patient person, I would have put the car into low-regen to start, but I wanted to get the hang of max regen as quickly as possible. Just bear in mind that low-regen mode is an option. Ultimately, to echo what @AndysComputer noted above, now that I've gotten used to one-pedal driving, I don't ever want to drive our ICE car, which I used to love driving. EVs just make so much sense, and the Mini Cooper SE is, IMHO, among the best-driving EVs available today. I'm confident you'll enjoy yours once you get used to the throttle.
I think one likely explanation for the split in initial experience is manual vs automatic ICE cars. Those coming from a manual typically have no issue adjusting to the regen since they are more used to modulating the throttle for engine braking and are not expecting to coast. Coming from an automatic takes a bit of time to reprogram your muscle memory (low regen mode is helpful here). It took me all of 5 seconds to get used to the regen but that's because the throttle on my Miata was even more sensitive than the SE's and would lurch and jerk if I let off too quickly.
Agreed about manual transmission experience! Reduced regeneration feels similar to engine braking. Also floor mounted pedals behave differently than a hanging pedals, so if someone is coming from an ICE vehicle with hanging pedals it will be a bigger learning curve.
Some people are touchier but I kind of agree with this. Came from a 6sp F55S and it was so much fun to learn how to do the regen breaking. I get to think about how I drive which is why I kept a manual for so many years - and why I had to get rid of my CRV as it was boring. Not sure I can agree there is such a thing as too much torque but I have a lead foot. I suggest turning regen to the lighter level if one does get car sick. I don't ever except if pregnant and neither does anyone in my family so we cannot comment much on that. With practice everything becomes very smooth on the SE. Even gunning it feels forceful but not jerky IMO.
