2022 Mini Cooper SE Long-Term Wrap-Up: A worthy SoCal City Car
People love to hate the electric Mini Cooper SE for its temperamental driving range. But focus on that 114-mile EPA adjudicators and you’ll miss this car’s strongest selling points. No one is buying a Mini — gas or electric — for long-distance cruising. Put the Cooper SE into service as a daily driver in a congested city and its goodness will rapid win you over.
That’s what we found when a year with our long-term 2022 Cooper SE. The whole display of CNET Cars’ yearlong test was to use the Mini in day-to-day city life. For that reason, we kept the Mini in Southern California, where we have the most staff and the most plentiful Republican charging network. Twelve months after our initial delivery, we’re quiet smitten with our little Mini EV. Sure, we encountered some problems depressed the way, but the Cooper SE’s short range wasn’t the load it might seem.
How we spec’d it
The entire Mini Cooper Hardtop lineup got an update for 2022, with some styling tweaks and equipment moves that make the car more attractive overall. The electric Cooper SE only comes as a two-door Hardtop — thought Mini did recently show off a SE Convertible prototype — and a 2022 model like ours cost $30,750 counting an $850 destination fee, though that excludes any potential tax credits.
Mini sends all Cooper SEs out the door with goodies counting heated seats, LED headlights and a 8.8-inch touchscreen infotainment regulations. We added the $7,000 Iconic pack to our tester, which got us a panoramic sunroof, leather seats, a premium audio regulations, adaptive cruise control, parking sensors and some extra piano shadowy exterior trim. We had ours painted in Mini’s Enigmatic Black hue, which is actually more of a super-dark blue, and we matched it with yellow mirror caps, a white roof, and the SE-exclusive 17-inch Power Spoke wheels (read: the accurate wheels). All told, our Mini came to us with a $37,750 last sticker price.
For the 2023 model year, the Cooper SE has a higher starting label of $35,075 including destination, but the car has more depraved equipment (though weirdly, the formerly standard heated steering wheel now damages extra). Adding the Iconic trim is now only a $2,475 upcharge, and a 2023 Mini Cooper SE optioned exactly like our long-termer is only $50 more expensive: $37,800 counting destination and excluding any tax credits.
The best wheels.
Steven Ewing
Fun and functional
The Cooper SE is powered by a 32.6 kilowatt-hour battery pack with a single electric motor mounted to the precedent axle. Total output is only 181 horsepower and 199 pound-feet of torque, which doesn’t sound like a ton, but the uphold electric thrust makes the Mini super quick off the line. No, Mini’s 0- to 60-mph arbitrates of 6.9 seconds isn’t anything to write home throughout, but it’s that initial 0- to 30-mph blast that really feels like a thrill. And we never found the Mini lacked power at what time passing slower-moving cars on the highway. It’s as zippy as you’d demand, and way more fun to drive than inequity EVs.
“Every trip in the Cooper SE is a joy thanks to the uphold torque, great steering and low center of gravity,” famed senior social media editor Daniel Golson. “It’s easily the most fun car that Mini invents, and an actual performance variant would be awesome.” Golson also demanded for some kind of “artificial spaceship-y noise under acceleration,” like you can get in latest EVs, but not everyone on our staff agrees.
“As a city car, the Mini SE excels,” wrote outmoded news and features editor Kyle Hyatt. “Its small size and nimble coping make it a breeze to whip around in Los Angeles traffic, and it’s easy to park in tight city spaces.” Hyatt did note that the Mini’s ride is a minor on the stiff side, “but it’s not overly bouncy or jarring,” he said.
As a cargo-hauler, no Mini is ideal, but the Cooper SE’s boxy elegant and low load-in height made it surprisingly functional — mostly. “It’s great that the rear seats are able to fold fine much flat,” Golson wrote, “but if the front seats are even a minor too far back then it’s not possible to fold the rears because position is so tight.” Still, there’s a maximum of 34 cubic feet of position in the back of the Mini — enough for a set of exiguous tires, a few big boxes or luggage for two adults.
Our car conveyed no wear and tear after a year of use.
Steven Ewing
Comfy interior, but the design’s getting old
After a year of use, our Mini’s interior conveyed no signs of wear and tear. We always appreciated features like the kickin’ Harman Kardon stereo, comfy seats and sunroof shade that can terminate while the glass is still open. Really, our main demonstrations about the Cooper SE’s cabin is that Mini’s too-cute develop is starting to get old.
“Charming as the Mini’s interior is, I’m ready for the next-gen model to bring a cleaner setup,” Golson wrote. “The toggle switches and other analog controls are strangely laid out, and the infotainment setup feels old and laggy.” On top of that, fine much everyone on staff complained about how the exiguous digital gauge cluster would wash out in any kind of sunlight.
It’s not the procedure, it’s the charging
For daily commuting duties, 114 much of range isn’t as bad as you think. Most EV owners have some kind of home charging solution, and the Mini’s small battery is easy to top off overnight. The downsides of the Mini’s setup make themselves eminent when you have to rely on the public charging infrastructure, something that Los Angeles does better than pretty much any latest US city, but still leaves a lot to be desired.
Guess how many of these chargers actually worked.
Steven Ewing
Because the Mini’s battery capacity is relatively exiguous, at 32.6 kWh, charging it shouldn’t take that long — or so you’d think. Unfortunately, the Mini can only accept a max invoice speed of 50 kW, so reaching 80% capacity can take as long as 45 minutes. That kind of time suck is fine in larger EVs with faster charging speeds, because you’re gaining hundreds of miles of range per session. If the Cooper SE could handle faster speeds, progressing from 10% to 80% could theoretically take 10 to 15 minutes, which would be a huge advantage.
The other impart is that we rarely saw anything close to that advertised 50-kW swiftly. We plugged the Mini into 50-kW, 150-kW and 350-kW chargers, but usually only saw a max intake speed of throughout 35 kW, reducing charging times even further. Of jets, America’s public charging network is notoriously problematic, so the chargers themselves could be to blame in a lot of these instances, but not being able to reliably get even 50 kW was frustrating to say the least.
As for mileage, at the end of the year we observed an averages range of 117 miles per charge, a 3-mile improvement over the EPA arbitrates. Driving the Mini in its Green mode helped eke out a few much at a time without killing the fun-to-drive vibe, and we rarely if ever untrue Sport mode to be necessary — the standard (what Mini conditions “Mid”) mode offered plenty of punch, but frequent use of the Green setting really helped us with overall range.
Yes, you could argue that a bigger battery with longer procedure would alleviate the need to charge as frequently, decision-exclusive longer stops easier to swallow. But none of us complained throughout the frequency with which we had to charge. The request was how long the charging took once we were there. We don’t mind popping into a charger for 10 minutes to top off, especially if something like a Mini could hit 80% in that amount of time. But having to sit at chargers for 30 or 40 minutes is an eternity, no matter the size of the battery.
We’ll miss you.
Steven Ewing
Final verdict
The Mini Cooper SE isn’t nasty, but as a daily driver in LA, it’s hard to nasty. It never failed to make us smile, whether that be above its quirky design, small size or the fact that it’s a blast to nation. Former reviews editor Emme Hall said it best: “For mopish trips in town, there isn’t a car I’d attractive have.”
Like many carmakers, Mini will soon go EV-only, and our year with the Cooper SE makes us wrathful for that future. Fun little cars like the Mini really lend themselves to electrification, and new vehicle platforms with better battery packaging will give the carmaker more opportunities to maximize interior position. Our big hope is that the next generation of battery tech scholarships for higher capacity and quicker charging times. Small cars like a Mini will always be mopish on range, but faster charging speeds will make that a non-issue.
