You Can’t Please Everybody

While browsing around Twitter, I came upon many links to one particular article, “First Drive: Mini E Electric Vehicle Is Far From Ready For Primetime.” It’s by John Voelker, Editor-in-Chief at GreenCarReports.com. He absolutely hated the MINI E! It’s the first time I’d ever seen any bad words said about the car except for its impracticality which is excusable since it is a test vehicle.

I can only assume that the real reason I and so many other Pioneers love the MINI E so much is that we haven’t driven other electric vehicles. Mr. Voelker compares the MINI E to several other EVs. He was particularly critical of the regenerative braking.

“Where to start? Perhaps with the regenerative braking, which replaces engine braking and slows the car while recharging the battery pack. In the Mini E, on lift-off, it took half a second to kick in–and then came on so strong it threw us forward in our seatbelts.”

Mr. Voelker also criticized a lag he noticed when first accelerating. I have to admit I didn’t notice this and will check it out when I get my MINI E. It could be because of the detuning necessary to use the existing drivetrain. An addendum to the article from AC Propulsion says that the test vehicle may not have had the latest software and that this lag has been reduced.

On the plus side, Mr. Voelker liked the interior and the rest of the car. All in all, he wants a car that is “easy to drive, so much so that it was easy to forget that we were driving an EV at all,” as he said of the Volt, Focus EV and Nissan EV. I’m not so sure that an EV should drive exactly the same as a gas powered car. Personally, I think we drive our cars incorrectly and inefficiently.

So why am I giving this article so much attention? Because everyone is entitled to his opinion. I’ve loved movies that had gotten bad reviews. BMW shouldn’t expect to please everyone. In addition, Mr. Voelker has one advantage over me, he test drove several EVs while I’ve only driven one. However, his article doesn’t change the fact that I love the one I drove!

Ultimately, this is what the field trial is all about. BMW will collect these opinions and use them when designing the next generation of their cars. However, I doubt that Peter Trepp, the first recipient of the MINI E, needs the pity Mr. Voelker offers at the beginning of his article. He seems to be doing just fine.