Plug & Charge anyone?

J

James Bucanek

New Member
First, a little gushing: Picked up my custom-order MINI Countryman SE ALL4 last weekend and took my first all-electric road trip (700mi) on Thursday/Friday.

I am sooooo in love with this car it's hard to express in words. I love the redesign, love the new MINI OS 9 navigation, love the sound effects, love the ride, love one-pedal driving, love love love the new driving assist mode ... I could go on.

Now to my question: Has anyone gotten Plug & Charge setup?

The MINI app says my MINI is Plug & Charge ready and I should "Follow the instructions from your charging supplier to activate..."

I assume that means starting in the Electrify America app, but that app doesn't list the 2025 MINI Countryman SE as a supported vehicle. Nor are any MINIs listed on the Electrify America Plug & Charge page.

So I was just wondering if I'm missing something, or starting in the wrong place, or if this is just a feature that's slow to roll out.

It's not too much of a big deal. To be completely honest, my road trip was seamless. I stopped at three Electrify America stations. The experience was as advertised: pull into a stall, plug in, start the charge in the app, and less than 20 minutes later you're back on the road—barely enough time to find a rest room and re-provision snacks. Hardly any time to chat with the IONIC driver that was on his first EV road trip too.

Now for the brag: This road trip was to attend the MINI Trick Driving course at the BMW Performance Center in Thermal, CA. Now that was a whole MINI of fun!!!!
 
So here's the 411.

I spent some back and forth with Electrify America support. The first response to "how do I set up Plug & Charge" was this:

While Plug and Charge is available on the Electrify America public network, utilizing this method of charging currently requires an active premium offer for qualifying vehicle models.​

Explaining that I must have a "qualifying vehicle," I then inquired as to how one would obtain a "premium offer". I finally got this reply:

There is not a Premium Offer associated with the 2025 MINI Cooper Countryman SE on the Electrify America infrastructure. To check the available Premium Offers that we have, you may check this link: https://www.electrifyamerica.com/premium-offers/.​

So, as far as I can tell, even though Plug & Charge is designed as a general purpose payment system, it is (at least on the Electrify America network) currently only being used to provide free charging benefits to new vehicle owners by certain brands ... and MINI isn't one of them.

So until the network providers expand Plug & Charge to the general public, it looks like we plebs have to charge up like the rest of the unwashed masses.
 
Thanks the research. I picked up a 2025 Countryman SE this week and noted the Plug & Charge feature. I plan to explore the various options but won’t (yet) bother with Electrify America. Besides, there are relatively few EA locations in CT and the two closest for me are a 25 - 30 minute drive.
 
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