The new Mini Countryman may not be available until early next year, but it’s already casting a shadow. And a pretty big one at that: The platform brother of the BMW X1 is almost as big as the Munich one and will therefore be a full-fledged compact SUV.
Even the first Countryman of modern times was the largest of the so-called minis, although it measured just over four meters in length. Practical with a sliding rear seat and 370 to 1,170 liters of luggage space. Generation 2 grew significantly. Now we are already at the third generation, which is 4.43 meters long and a remarkable 1.61 meters high. So 13 cm or 6 cm more than its predecessor, the brand’s first plug-in hybrid. The Countryman E delivers 140 kW/191 hp to the front wheels with an electric motor. The MINI Countryman SE ALL4, on the other hand, is the brand’s first all-wheel drive electric vehicle. Two highly integrated drive units on the front and rear axles together generate power that, including a temporary boost, amounts to 230 kW/313 hp. The battery capacity of the front-wheel drive vehicle is 54 kilowatt hours, that of the all-wheel drive vehicle is 64.7 kWh. With an estimated range of around 450 kilometers, the whole thing should drive in a similar way to the BMW iX1, from which the technology comes. When it comes to tuning, however, Mini wants to differ from the Munich SUV. A John Cooper Works variant is to follow later Secondary aluminium. The surfaces of the dashboard, the steering wheel, the headliner and floor and the floor mats are made of recycled polyester, which was obtained from PET bottles and carpet scraps. This alternative to traditional materials should reduce CO2 emissions along the value chain by up to 85 percent. Four wind turbines with a height of 190 meters are part of the long-term, sustainable strategy for energy production and consumption of the BMW Group’s “green plant” in Leipzig the factory premises. This means that more than 20 GWh of electricity can be generated from wind energy per year. Up to 700 high-voltage batteries from the BMW i3 are used a second time in the company’s own storage farm. The system can temporarily store electricity, including from the wind turbines, on the factory premises and thus optimize local energy management or contribute to grid stabilization of the power grid.
source site-13