Mini Cooper SE vs Ioniq 5 SE AWD

Hyundai may look good initially but frankly speaking absolutely no match in terms of quality material. Hyundai gives a warranty as bait and fish you in, their cars are total crap and I feel they just stealing the looks from all other successful cars. Iconic is first car I see perhaps not copied something else.. or I just don't yet know it... mini on other hand, is a unique and special - and I was so pleasantly surprised during the test drive.. ordered one- right away!!!

 

I have the roulettes and usually get around 150-160 miles calculated range, sometimes more. I think you'd have to have both wheels and do tests to really figure out how much of a range hit they take, but it should be minimal and nothing like changing to different tires. My longest trip without charging has been 118 miles to the beach and back, and I made it back with 26% and 25% SOC on two different occasions. I've also gone 123 miles (multiple trips) with 28% SOC left (that's 171-mile range!). So, I don't think you should worry about the wheels. I may have chosen the Power Spokes if they had been available for a Sig+, but I'm glad they weren't because the roulettes are beautiful and look great on BRG. You should be glad that person bought the Ioniq 5 and made the decision for you. I think for your situation, the SE will be great, and a lot of fun. I also have two kids (6 and 4) and take them around everywhere in the SE, except on long trips where we need room in the trunk and wouldn't be able to take a MINI anyway. One of the things I look forward to every day is driving my SE. You're going to love it!

 

Just take the roulette wheels. Power spoke is just too finicky as you need specialized tools for changing tires and balancing unless you plan on using the dealership.

As for the tax credit, I guess you're stuck with the Pacifica if you took delivery in 2022. You better check with a tax professional for the tax credit since you plan on getting two EVs in the same year.

 

Just a quick fun side note. Last Saturday I took a non-EV friend out for a spirited ride in my SE. He was quite impressed with the build quality, interior headroom, and fun factor of the Mini. At one point I took an aggressive hard left with a green light exit from the freeway which resulted in a perfect drift around the corner. Sold! Big fun in a Mini SE with a retired police officer in the passenger seat. He's now looking for an EV. I would not have tried that in the I5.

 

You're lucky your policeman friend didn't call for back-up. I've never been able to drift my SE--you must have really cranked it around that corner!

 

First consider the two car companies. Ten years from now Hyundai will be going strong while the company that makes the mini-Cooper will be toast. Also you get what you pay for. People are claiming a great build quality, but the long term reviews in Consumer Reports show otherwise. The Ioniq, while more expensive, is built on their experience with the Ionic sedan and the Kona EV. I have owned a Kona EV since 2019... in short, it is the best vehicle I have ever owned... and I owned a Toyota Prius hybrid for half a million miles before the Kona . The Ioniq charges twice as fast at a D/C charger than other EVs. For long trips, you could easily replace your other ICE family vehicle. By the time you take your family to the bathroom and eat a snack, the Ioniq would be charged (20 min to go from 10% to 80%). Charging on D/C you won't want to charge past 80% as the charging slows down to protect the battery and the cost which is by minute goes up. You will find for a daily commute that you would need to charge maybe once every ten days or two weeks. I charge maybe once or twice a month on a Level 1 plugged into a 110v receptacle overnight. For a family the Ionic is an ideal size. The Kona EV is the right size for a retired couple. You will find that a vehicle with a larger battery, you will not have range anxiety. I can drive from Vancouver BC to Tacoma WA back north to Everett WA on one charge. I routinely drive from Vancouver to Kelowna BC with one top off charge on the way. Range anxiety is not even an issue, despite major steep elevation gains. I have seriously looked into the Ioniq - the quicker charging is a great temptation. But I swore to my wife that this would be the last vehicle that I purchase. Temperature is a non issue as the Hyundai EVs use a heat pump to keep the battery at optimal temps when charging and driven. I calculated that if I were to D/C charge daily for twenty years for my commute, I would still have a 90% battery capacity at the end of that time (see the graph). There has been some concern over battery fires, but a recent study showed that ICEs catch fire 3 times more than an EV. You cannot go wrong with the Hyundai Ioniq. You get what you pay for.

 

My experience with Hyundai was terrible. My wife had a 2016 Hyundai Tucson Limited which has a 1.6L turbo and 7 speed DCT. The interior was great, very quiet, and rode well. The fit and finish was very good.

The problem with the car was the transmission. Such a terrible transmission. It would hesitate, smelled terrible, had numerous recalls, and made the car unbearable to drive. In stop and go traffic, it would buck like a teenager learning how to drive a manual transmission. If you did this for very long, it would start to overheat and you would have to turn the car off. We had to turn the car off to prevent the transmission from overheating on more than one occasion.

Just driving around, the lag between shifts felt like an old Impala with a slush box. Yuck.

Also, over time little things starting acting strange too. On road trips, the AC would stop working. Why? We would turn the car off for a few minutes, start it again, and AC would be back.

The transmission was complete junk. The dealer had it for weeks as they tried to reprogram it and fix the issue. We got it back and it smelled like burned gear oil.

We sold the car and got a Honda CR-V which has been much more reliable.

It seems that Hyundai cuts corners to save money and then spend money on the cosmetics of the car. I really think this is their strategy in building cars too. Piece of junk wrapped in a pretty package. I'll never buy another one.

 

That figure was for Nissan Leaf Gen1 battery testing under Xu, A. Oudalov, A. Ulbig, G. Andersson and D. Kirschen, "Modeling of Lithium-Ion Battery Degradation for Cell Life Assessment," June 2016. If you actually looked into their Dynamic Stress Test (DST) procedure, it was Nissan Leaf Gen 1 batteries at a 1C rate.

The target demographic for Hyundai Kona drivers are completely different from MINI Cooper SE drivers. Kona drivers seem to put high priority on electric range while MINI Cooper SE drivers seem to value "fun to drive" and "easy to modify". Certainly many of us have a Tesla in the garage alongside a Cooper SE so range isn't an issue.

 

- I agree, I'm buying MIN-E for my wife but I want a weekend FUN car more than anything - Safer than buying a bike I thought... Model Y is fun too but MINI was a surprising pleasant when I test drove and just ordered one!

 

I’d just like to know why BMW “will be toast” in ten years. You pretty much lost me with that statement.

 

I'll bet the MINI long term reviews in Consumer Reports suffer primarily because of the ICE power train. I wouldn't get an ICE MINI for a daily driver. But i'm thinking the SE power train (proven tech from the I3) combined with basically everything else from a standard F56 MINI, will make for a super reliable car, long term.

 

I don't have ready access to Consumer Reports at present, but I have always found their "big data" approach to evaluating vehicles quite helpful. Your hypothesis could be tested by seeing where ICE F56s have commonly had problems, and whether those same parts/systems are shared with the SE, or not.

 

Both of which reached the market AFTER the BMW i3 from which the SE gets its drive system, correct?

 

Love my 2020 Kona EV.
Hate car dealers. What's with mandatory "protection" packages?" If you hear that, walk away. Or tell them it's mandatory that you pay in Monopoly money.
But comparing these two vehicles seems like apples and prunes.
100 miles a day next to big trucks in those little seats would be nerve-wracking and butt-numbing in that Mini.

 

It makes no sense to compare a MINI Cooper SE with a giant SUV. One is for fun and the other is for utility. I wish Consumer reports would test the MINI Cooper SE, but all I could find on the Consumer Reports website was this information on a gas-powered MINI Cooper:

 

And in general, the review sites (and thus the review aggregators) like the SE but specifically knock off points for its limited range and interior space, both observations that are out front to the shopper. If the car isn’t for you, it isn’t for you.

 

BMW i3s but close enough. They detuned the torque curve in 2017+ because there were reports of damage to the rear chassis on the BMW i3 for 2014-2016 due to HARD launches.

 

I love driving so my cars must be fun to drive and put a smile on my face; even when driving to the grocery store. The Mini will do that. The Hyundai….doesn’t do it. It’s like the Toyota RAV4 we bought when our son got his license 10 years ago. It’s extremely reliable, but the most boring car to drive. Like the Hyundai, they call it an SUV, but it’s not an SUV. It’s just a taller car. My wife asked me to go to Costco last weekend to gas it up. Ugh what a chore. I wish we could get rid of it, but my son and daughter still drive it.

My wife is as passionate about cars and driving as I am. On a whim, we test drove a Mini SE earlier this year. What a blast. We both also love manual transmissions for the fun factor. The lack of a manual didn’t diminish the fun factor. We then looked at a few other EVs including EV6, Ionig, and ID.4. We looked but didn’t drive any of them. As soon as we looked at them we both said the same thing: another boring RAV4. From there, we placed an order for the Mini that should arrive by July.