What it’s like to drive the new Mini Electric

Most electric cars no longer look peculiar, and the battery powered Mini is a good example of this.

Go back a decade and electric cars were either tiny city vehicles with crude, shed like bodies or bigger and a bit weird. The original Nissan Leaf had the contours of a giant child’s shoe. The current, less outre one looks like a Micra after a heavy lunch.

Before Tesla made electric cars desirable, motor manufacturers didn’t see them as commercial propositions, and paid lip service with prototypes that were about as appealing as a thorn twig scourge. Now the legislative and commercial landscape has changed, and the rush is on to turn electric cars into every day consumer durables.

So, the electric Mini has the familiar rounded front end, bug eyed headlamps, sawn off profile and styling tropes that pay aesthetic tribute to the 1959 original. The instruments and controls aren’t radically different, looking as if they’ve been inspired variously by Italian coffee making devices and 1950s mantlepiece clocks, although everything is easy enough to read and find.