Mini Countryman PHEV

Anybody any experience of 2017MY Countryman - in particular the PHEV or the special John Cooper Works version?

Well after 4 days loan of the local dealership’s demo I have ordered one to replace my RRS. The Sport will be 3 years old in April BUT there is an acknowledged design fault with the crankshaft and LR’s Extended Warranty doesn’t cover it............ and the repair is a £17,000 new engine. So instead it is time for a change of marque and back to cheap VED (£!0 pa!) and low Insurance costs

(27-11-2017 06:04pm)XFullFatTim Wrote:  Well after 4 days loan of the local dealership’s demo I have ordered one to replace my RRS. The Sport will be 3 years old in April BUT there is an acknowledged design fault with the crankshaft and LR’s Extended Warranty doesn’t cover it............ and the repair is a £17,000 new engine. So instead it is time for a change of marque and back to cheap VED (£!0 pa!) and low Insurance costs

Sounds like a wise move, i am looking at changing our Evoque at the moment but with 3 dogs need a bigger boot than the Evoque has and think going back to a CRV is the route we will take.

Try the Countryman, you would be surprised just how big it is - it is way bigger than the Clubman (the one with the two van doors on the back). It’s not the most beautiful car to look at but nicer than any Porsche or Audi! Mini dealerships are doing 48 hour test drives at the moment but my local Mini Centre in Stirling were happy to give me the PHEV for 4 days.

How far do you get out of one charge and do you need a special charging point?

26 miles on a charge ( absolute max and on a day when you don’t want to run heaters, heated seats, heated front screen etc ). It takes 2.5 hours to recharge on a 13amp plug and the car’s systems can be set up to have not only timed cabin heating when plugged into the mains, you can also set the timer to start recharging in off peak periods. I was able to completely recharge from my home solar array on two bright afternoons when exporting 3.5kWh to the national grid. The export rate dropped to 900wh ( enough for me to run 3 out of 5 of my electric heating panels in the house too before I started being a consumer rather than an exporter) during car charging. You can also plug into public charging points ( that you pay for) that can charge the battery in 30 minutes if you can can plug in the special 3 phase plug into the car or you can use the 13 amp on the cable supplied with the car) As 90% of my motoring these days is a 16mile trip into town and another 16 back i’m Looking forward to making the 36ltr petrol tank last quite a long time. While I had the car on loan I added £5 of petrol after 135miles of combined electric and petrol driving to take the fuel gauge above the level I had received the car with......... I started with ½ a tank and handed it back with ¾ because I’m not used to adding such small amounts of fuel to a car! The BMW Satnav system can also be set to select routes that favour the use of electric only mode. For longer trips on petrol only the 1.5ltr 3cylinder Engine is reckoned to give about 40mpg in real life - Mini claims 113mpg in official combined petrol/electric motoring cycle.
No need to have a home rapid charger unless you feel that you need to do a charge in 30 minutes - even with a government subsidy they are expensive and you have to take the cost of having one into your cost per mile running charge. I would say that if you have a pure EV they are essential but for a PHEV, no need even though most people I know with Outlander PHEVs have one, it is because a Mitsuibishi takes 8-10 hours to recharge on a 13 amp socket and a couple of hours on a rapid charger - different and more modern tech battery systems in the Mini make the difference.

Charging cables - the car comes with a Chademo socket on the side of the car and the supplied cable has the plug for that on one end and a 13 amp plug on the other, public charging points have various types of plugs built onto them as there is no standard system yet......... I was advised to download the Zap-Map app to my smart phone to find a) charging points b) (really important) if the points are operational/ already in use and c) to see which type of charger and which company runs them http://www.zap-map.co.uk


You might enjoy this video which is pretty fair https://youtu.be/xvYib-iccrc
The presenter says in the USA there is 12 miles electric range, in Europe we must have a better battery as I easily got 24 miles from the demo car. Its Spec is very similar to what I have ordered (including the colour which is very similar to Land Rover’s old Ipanema Sand shade) except I was advised not to have the all leather interior as there have been creasing problems with it so I have the Black half leather/ cloth standard seats, I have also added a panoramic roof to help lighten the all black interior. I also opted for black roof rails instead of silver and along with all the other options I ticked I have spent £39750......... but will get a rebate of £2500 on that from the government for buying a low emissions vehicle....

Nearly £40K on a Mini?

Oh, you can easily take it over that.............. but base price is £31800 IIRC

Been following this on the RRS forum, will be interesting to see what happens.

Not much at the moment! Turns out BMW’s build/delivery dates are as creative as Land Rovers.......... car should have been built in March for early April delivery, due to a problem at BMW’S ordering system in January my build went to April and now it’s 7th May............