BMW will build a limited run of 500 all-electric Minis later this year, designed to meet new Californian regulations that will require carmakers selling cars in the state to offer a number of zero emission vehicles. The cars will also be used to carry out various tests on electrically powered vehicles to determine the alternative drive of the future, and possibly lead to the first volume production of all-electric BMW cars.

The Mini factory located in Oxford, England, will supply the car bodies without powertrains to a team located in Munich, Germany, which will then add the electric powertrain.

"This step will allow the BMW Group to gain an initial knowledge of how mobility can be achieved efficiently using purely electrically powered vehicles. Our task here is to combine the ultimate driving experience with an efficient electrified drive with practically no emissions", explained BMW CEO Norbert Reithofer.

All 500 cars would end up in California, with 490 to be leased to selected customers and the remaining ten used as show cars. All will be painted silver but will feature yellow roofs.

Surprisingly, the converted electric Minis won’t be the first. An American company in the state of Nevada has been building electric conversions of the new Mini complete with a 78kW brushless AC motor and lithium-ion batteries for over a year. The company, called Hybrid Technologies, claims that charging up the car’s batteries takes about 8-10 hours from a regular household power outlet. Top speed is only around 130km/h but driving at a slower speed preserves battery life and yields an effective range of up to 200km on a single charge. How the official electric Mini’s figures will compare with these is yet to be known.

Not the first time California has been at the centre of EV production
California’s Air Resources Board, or CARB, and its emissions regulations are widely regarded as some of the most stringent in the world. That high level of concern for atmospheric pollution is necessary considering the state is home to nearly 40 million inhabitants whose love affair with the automobile has been the stuff of film and music legend for decades. In fact, this ‘new’ requirement that all carmakers operating within the state offer a minimum number of electric vehicles isn’t new at all, but the reinstatement of a previous regulation.

In the 1990s, California had the same basic rule, and it was part of the impetus behind the Toyota Rav4 EV and General Motors’ EV1, the subject of the documentary 'Who Killed the Electric Car?'. Eventually the automotive lobby won over California’s legislators, however, and the electric vehicle programs of the major manufacturers were scrapped. In the end, the benefits were far outweighed by the costs to the carmakers because at the time the technology was even more prohibitively expensive than it is today.

Same input may yield different output
The reinstated rules may have a more positive outcome this time around, thanks primarily to advances in battery technology and the computers that control them. The world’s first electric sports carmaker, Tesla, was founded in California’s Menlo Park, and recently opened its first retail outlet store in Los Angeles, the heart of the state’s population and car culture. Whether that car and the limited production conversions sold by the major manufacturers will have any tangible impact on California’s pollution situation is unlikely, but it could spawn more research and development into the field by companies not otherwise predisposed to do so.

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