Thursday, May 21, 2009

Test Drive Day

Later today I will be visiting Bob Smith MINI in Calabasas for my first test drive of the MINI E. From everything I've read and heard I expect this to be a fast and nimble car with a learning curve around the regenerative braking system. I have been told that there is literally no need to touch the brake pedal when approaching a stop light - this should be interesting. By the way, I understand that the brake lights will come on during certain periods of deceleration even without touching the brake pedal (more on that later).

Regarding an official delivery date for my MINI E, I am being told that they are readying a car for me now and that I should be able to take delivery either Tue or Wed of next week.

On a separate note, I've been told that driving a MINI makes you look and feel younger. I guess I better think about the kind of music I'm playing on my iPod at a stop light when someone asks me if this really is an EV. It might be time to hit the iTunes store.

Stay tuned for post-test drive impressions.

Peter

2 comments:

  1. Peter,

    Have fun!

    One thing I did not do was take a note of the state of charge, how many miles I drove, and the state of charge after.

    To be fair most of my driving was punching it and it was only for 10 minutes or so but I was so samn excited I did not check on that parameter.

    again, have fun!

    Peder

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  2. Yesterday when I got into the MINI-E it said it had a 67 mile range and the charge level was at about 85%.
    Nadine from MINI-E told me that was a miss-calculation by the car because of all the various driving styles by the various driver that had been driving that car. But that seemed way low. Is it a bug or is the real range over promised.

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