Electric MINIs Headed for California

khallgeisler — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400

BMW, which owns the Mini brand, is slated to bring 500 electric-powered Mini Coopers to California sometime in the near future. You will know them by their distinctive paint job, silver with a yellow roof. You'll also be able to recognize them by their quiet operation and smug, smiling drivers. Oh, how I wish I could be one of those.

The company is building 500 empty cars -- no engines, no fuel tanks, no gearboxes -- at the Mini factory in England. The shells will be shipped to Germany to be fitted with electric motors, batteries, and chargers, as well as presumably a new type of transmission. The completed Mini EVs will be brought to the States.

Well, one state, anyway. Like all these new-technology vehicles, BMW will lease the Minis to customers in California, not sell them outright. Of the 500 total, 490 will be available to the public, while 10 will be kept as show cars.

Folks outside California (and impatient Californians) can still get an electric Cooper, for a price. Hybrid Technologies converted a Mini to lithium-ion battery power and brought it to Popular Mechanics HQ last year. You can buy one from the company today that goes 75 mph and has a 100-mile range -- for about $50,000, or twice the price of a standard Mini.

Image courtesy of Mini.

MPGs and Model Ts

tdupuy — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

Would you like to know the carbon footprint of your new Cadillac Escalade? I bet you wouldn’t. Nope, if you drive one of those you don’t really care about MPGs or pollution. I’m sure you’re just too busy eating your young.

Okay, cheap shot - totally uncorroborated (but not unimaginable). Your annual carbon footprint, according to fueleconomy.gov, is 13.1 tons of C02, by the way. Worse than the 12.2 of the Hummer H3 (the H1 and H2’s footprints are suspiciously absent from the site). Oh yeah, I have found a new realm of self-righteousness and reason to be snotty to people in traffic. Not that I needed any more, I was plenty snotty already…

This one started with mild curiosity:

I read somewhere that the Model T got better gas mileage than the average light-duty vehicle today. Think about the leaps the telephone has made in the last 100 years. From a glorified telegraph machine at the turn of the last century to the iPhone. But cars are getting WORSE fuel efficiency?! The answer is yes and no. The reports of the actual MPG of the Model T vary. Some say that it got average of 21 MPG; others, up to 25. The average for all vehicles today is 21 MPG. But the fudging of the MPGs for sake of argument may never change. The Model T’s all 4 cylinders couldn’t go above 45 miles an hour. It also had a whopping 20 horsepower (compared with the ’07 Camry that has 269).

The thing from an environmental stand point with the Model T was that early versions could run on ethanol. That changed during prohibition. The Model T was not chosen as the most popular car of its time because it was good looking, safe or fuel efficient. It became popular because it could be mass produced and Ford had a credit program where the middle class could at last own an automobile. There were other electric and steam powered cars that were superior to the Model T but economic Darwinism left them behind.

So the Model T kind of got around the same gas mileage as today’s vehicles, if not held to any today’s standards for automobiles. Skewed factoid, but still very interesting. Still mortifying.

That lead me to the EPA’s website, where I looked up what the MPG is on my car (an ‘07 MINI Cooper manual). There is a bit of a difference between what the manufacturer said it was going to be (37-40) and what it actually gets (average 35).

The website now offers to quantify the carbon footprint of your vehicle. Mine is 5.9. The Prius is 4.0. The Aston Martin DB9 Coupe- 15.2. Now I have the ammunition for a juicy new prejudice! “Your footprint is over 10 - don’t even think I’m letting you in!” “Oh yeah, you don’t care about smog, Mr. 11.3? - I don’t care about speeding up so you can have this parking place.” “Hey you, 9.6! Go @*#& yourself!”

mini

Electric MINIs Headed for California

MPGs and Model Ts