Forget football’s January transfer window – the biggest loan signing of the month has been made by New York City as it swoops for 10 of the BMW Group’s MINI E electric zero-emission vehicles.
The vehicles will be used as part of the city’s Street Condition Observation Unit (SCOUT) and will be part of 500 MINI E vehicles that BMW is producing to test the viability of electric cars in real life use. The cars will be driven by inspectors searching the streets to look at conditions such as potholes and graffiti.
The MINI E can travel more than 150 miles on a single charge and boasts all the agility and handling of the MINI Cooper. It is driven by a 150kW electric motor that is powered by a lithium-ion battery and is the first product of BMW’s Project I which is designed to research and develop transportation strategies to meet the growing needs of mega cities such as New York.
To make the vehicles more viable, MINI will install a special wall box into each customer’s home that can recharge a drained battery in two-and-a-half hours.
Of the 500 US vehicles to be deployed, 450 will go to customers that applied online at the company’s website to be part of a one-year field study. The others will be dedicated to select fleets. Additional vehicles are being tested in cities such as Berlin, Los Angeles and London.
