New owner here. Amaaaazing car. Just cannot get over the SE. Is there a way to define charge limits? I'd love to set it at 80%, especially since I'll only drive 30 miles most days.
The SE always charges to 100%. But you don't have to worry about overcharging the battery, MINI built in a buffer so 100% is roughly equivalent to Tesla's 80%.
Congrats, @polyphonic ! I am not looking to get a car until spring 2021, but I am decided on the SE and have enjoyed learning good stuff on this forum. If you have time and are willing, can you find the delivery tracking spreadsheet thread and fill out your trim choices (and production dates if you know them)? We have been tracking stats on delivery timing and trim choices to keep people better informed.
Not needed on the SE... BMW has handily put in those for you and you don't have access to them and aren't in danger of damaging your battery by charging however you like... 8 year 70% battery warranty to go with it
And just to be sure - that means they warrant the battery for retaining at least 70% capacity through So 8 years worry-free on the batt is great. Do we have any notion of how much a battery replacement costs in year 9 (if needed)?
Nothing more specific than 4 year old hand-wavy quotes unfortunately: https://enrg.io/how-much-does-a-bmw-i3-battery-replacement-cost/#:~:text=The%20BMW%20i3%20battery%20replacement%20cost%20is%20%2416%2C000.
Aye, but the good news is after long-term studies with older Leaf and Tesla owners, people are finding batteries aren't as fragile and prone to life/storage reduction as once thought... (except the poor leaf owners with air-cooled batteries) - thankfully the Mini SE has thermal management of the batteries and that has shown to give the batteries the best chance at a long life.
Our nearly 8 year old Tesla has 95% original capacity, the idea that battery will die short of the normal lifetime of a car (~15 years) is scare mongering, not based on fact.
My 4 year old Spark EV was down to 13kWh from the original 18.4kWh, a capacity drop of 29%, which isn't out of the ordinary for that model year. It's not a given that batteries can't degrade quickly, even with active thermal management. However with BMW's experience building the i3 you'd think any potential issues would be ironed out by the time they made the SE, as long as there's not some issue caused by the new cell supplier they switched to.
I look on the bright side. By the time I have to replace my batteries technology advancements should be able to get more range out of the same size battery pack.
Or my preference: a "sport-batt" option that doesn't increase the range, but reduces the car's weight by hundreds of pounds.
Thanks all for the replies! Do we know what the usable capacity is out of the 32.6 kWh? I'm sure the engineers did a great job, but I like to be ultra-conservative. Just a personal preference. That must be some buffer though. Our e-tron has a conservative buffer (4% at the top, 8%* at the bottom), and Audi suggests an 80% daily cap. @GvilleGuy - this was just a dealer trade for an existing vehicle. Probably a cancelled order. Still relevant to the sheet?
I have heard 28.9kWh available out of 32.6kWh total (89%). I have not seen anything about how much of that 11% buffer is at the top versus the bottom.
The dealer's service department certainly has a way to evaluate whether a battery has reached the warranty replacement threshold. I asked my dealer to perform that check so I'd have a baseline number, but my car was delivered on my dealership's last day of business and they never got it done. The other day I returned to the place where my MINI was delivered just two months ago. After only a month they gave up on the idea of turning it into a used-car center. Where once there were scores of MINI Coopers, mine felt very lonely.
