[Rick]

Ehh, I went for a ride in a mini cooper S with a friend who was considering buying one. Interesting little car in deed, build quality is really good as it is a BMW, but overall something didn't impress me. Although I have to admit that they are smart with how they are selling them. To get a mini cooper S you have to put down a $1,000 deposit to get on the list. In a few months they contact you and you put down another $1,000 to get an order, finally about 7 months after that you finally get the car. They are smart because they have kept the demand high even years after they were first sold. And used ones with 10,000 miles on them are bringing MSRP still.

I dunno, the new Mini's are novel, but from what I saw not really all they are hyped up to be. Still, I like their billboards "Lets sip gas, not guzzle."

 

[Rick]

Mini has been in the US since 2000 I believe. They have become a novel car to have for those with enough money to play around with. Fuel economy is sorta accounted for. One of their billboards is "Let's sip gas, not guzzle." Still, the 5 speed is rated for 28 mpg city and 37 mpg highway. I think the goal was more to make a fun to drive car than a fuel sipper. This is evident in the fact that they offer not only an optional supercharged version, but also a 6 speed and performance suspension packages.

That billboard has since been taken down, but it was very ironic that it was the next one say a half mile away from the one before it that was an advertisment for a big Dodge truck.

 

[Rick]

I did go for a ride in a cooper S. It was alright, that ride included hard enough acceleration and cornering to make the guy giving the test drive look nervous. It was fun, but overall I don't think they lived up to their hype. The friend who was test driving the car ended up buying a S2000, which now that I've been in both the S2000 is a lot more fun. Not to mention a 9000 rpm red line and over 200 hp at the rear wheels from a 2 liter engine. It's just impressive. And it's a Honda too. But thats just my opinion.

 

[Rick]

Ok I just found out that for the movie the Italian Job for the scene inside the subway tunnel they wern't allowed to use Internal Combustion so they made 3 mini's full electric. Now that would be a cool conversion.

I could just see it now, AC propulsion drive train, lithion ion pack, should give you about a 250 mile range and enough power to play with your average Ferrari!
http://www.acpropulsion.com/
There's come cool videos of their Tzero drag racing some very expensive cars.

 

[Rick]

Ok, you could do 200 miles anyways. I didn't think the new mini's weighed that much. This would be with a lithium ion battery pack. If you had a lead acid pack in a conversion your looking at more like a 50 mile or less usable range. It really depends on how efficient of a drive train you use. For the movie I'm sure the cars only had a few miles of range, thats all they'd need, I'm just saying you could give it more range easily. I'm not exactly sure where you could put batteries though. Maybe under the floor boards if they wern't too low.

Now, FYI there has already been one Insight EV conversion. It's got an AC drive train and initially the guy had some hawker batteries in it to see if it would work out and he eventually went to a lithium ion and has a 250 mile range on the car.

Only drawback, lithium ion is expensive still. But even with a small sealed lead acid pack given the limited dimensions you could still design a fast little 30 mile commuter mini fairly easily.

 

[Rick]

Well first browse through Ac Propulsions web site if you haven't. There's some cool stuff there. The selection of lithium ion would be simply for maximum range. The Nickel Metal Hydrive equiped EV1's range was about 140 miles with their ultra efficient drive train. The Tzero can go about 300 with it's lithium ion pack. If you didn't need extreme range nickel metal hydrides would probably make a lot more sense as far as cost, and they don't have the issues of lithium.

Another promising solution is nickel zinc, which would give you about a 100 mile range and not cost an arm and a leg.

If you just wanted a get around town fun little mini conversion though you could do it with some Hawker batteries probably fairly well. As far as price, well... the EV components for a good conversion would run probably about $10,000 (I know eww), but that would buy you some pretty good stuff. Check http://www.evparts.com Wilde EVolutions has all the goodies. If you had some extra money sitting around and found say a mini with a blown engine it'd be cool.

My EV background came from my High School's now penniless and defunct electric vehicle racing team. We had a Plymouth Laser made in to a full race car and a Fiero that was street legal. Now they were limited for saftey purposes, but it got me in to the preformance EV stuff. Just to throw out a little snippit to impress you here in the Phoenix area lives the current 1/4 mile electric record holder. His dragster has ran an 8.801 at ummm, really fast, I'm not exactly sure, but he had to tone it down at one point so he didn't have to pull his chute (I think he's crossed the finish line at 149mph, they want a chute at 150 if I recall correctly).

But yeah, I'd have probably never known about the Insight if it wern't for the club at school. But at heart I'm an EV guy, certain things prevent me from driving full EV right now, but I'm possibly working on it. My dream car, GM EV1, no doubt in my mind. Too bad they are all going away. Here it is, I'm saying it, if somehow someone had an EV1 (with a title) and came up to me and asked if I wanted to trade I couldn't get rid of the Insight quick enough. I'd say here's my keys, whats the activation code? And drive off with it without a second thought about it.

All well, I at least have my GEM car for my short distance neighborhood commutes. I've had it for about two months and have put over 150 miles on it so far.

 

[Rick]

Well, maybe, but probably not by a whole lot. It could in fact be the opposite actually. I have seen an EV1 parked next to an Insight at a car show here locally. The EV1 is actually quite a bit longer and wider, but you have to consider it was built from the ground up to be an EV. Really they share a lot of design similarities. The EV1 has a CD of .19! Which is slick compared to even the Insight at .25. I've never driven an EV1, but from what I hear they drive like they are on rails. I think they would handle equally if the EV1 couldn't outhandle Insight. The batteries are set up in a T shape. The Laser we had at school had the same design and with the pack sitting as low as it did the center of gravity was way low and it was hard to throw the back of the car around because of the traction due to the weight.

You have to consider the EV1 was made to hold the battery weight. It is also made out of alluminum like the Insight and uses LRR tires, though the Michelin Proxima's they used are a much less harsh tire, ride is better.

For an Insight EV conversion you remove the magic box as well as the spare tire and give up the storage well and you've got a lot of room in the rear of the car. The one that was done did just that and filled it with lithium ion batteries. This weight in the rear sunk is pretty badly, I think he ended up having some custom springs made to handle the extra weight. With all that weight kinda high in the back of the car I'm not too sure what it would do for handling, but I don't think it would be that great. Of course you could probably put some more up front and balance it out some as well.

Thats the problem with a conversion, you put batteries wherever you can fit them. Some cars just tend to be better for doing this than anything else. Fiero's are common conversions.

http://www.austinev.org/evalbum/461.html
Here's the Insight EV if anyones interested in seeing it. The pictures show the Hawkers in the car and the Lithiums sitting on the floor waiting to go in the car. Ohh, and it should have a 120 mph or so cruising speed in 3rd gear.