Modern Motoring – A Quick Spin review with the 2022 MINI Countryman SE PHEV – Plugging away

The 2022 Mini Countryman SE sees up to 29 km of electric range in this bigger-than-it-seems crossover.

Here’s our quick spin on the 2022 mini countryman phav i’m jay i’m steph this is modern motoring oh hi hi this is what happens when neither of us decide to do the intro but for now i’m make a decision hey and it’s gonna be you we’re in a car thanks for watching but wait there’s more anyway hi hi welcome to our quick spin in the 2022 mini countryman s-e-p-h

Something something plug-in hybrid that’s really all you need to know um and there’s those crappy brakes we’ll get into that in a moment um right so this is not a new vehicle it’s new to us so there’s a lot out there on this i think we’ll just take it for a quick spin give you our quick perspectives on what we’ve seen what we’ve found um in our first experience

With it without getting into all the nitty gritty details that’s what we’re looking at today so let’s start with the exterior it’s a mini contribution it is exactly a mini country it’s it’s it’s still a mini brand but just things get bigger and bigger all right i wasn’t sure i was gonna go on this ride but you just started it you finished it up and then uh yeah

I’ll just rough the exterior stuff it looks the same it’s got the 18 inch wheels it’s got the cute little bug eye headlights are they cute i think so okay and they’re adaptive headlights with the premiere plus package which we’ll get into in a minute yeah um but yeah it’s not like there’s anything exciting happening on the outside which isn’t bad uh the charging

Port is just on the front quarter panel pretty simple level one level two there’s no level three option uh we’ll get our charging comes out of the way now so you can plug it into a household outlet at 120 volts you’re at 7.2 hours to go up to 100 uh if you have a level 2 in your house so you find one out wonderful world you’re in uh that comes down to 3.2 hours and

It’s up to 29 kilometers of electric range so many variables but anyway i’m gonna steer myself back away from the non outside bring myself in and pass it over to you for your uh for your piece well first of all 20 29 kilometers is not a lot but we are going to do a whole section where we’re talking about driving so we can get into that that too for the exterior

And the size piece i i feel a little bit like okay i know why minnie builds this car it’s because people want reasonably sized suvs right there’s nothing mini about it you can park a compact sedan next to this and this thing is bigger i i just i don’t know i’ve i get why people like it it’s the quirkiness the styling you know it’s brand loyalty and all the

Things sure to me i don’t see the point but yeah i’m also not the target market for this i think and you’re a very unique buyer uh-huh so um any thoughts on the outside i could guess there’s a little difference right oh no here hang on we need to get into your whole thing with the taillights i noticed this when it first came out and i included my little videos

And it was cute but nobody noticed and i’m sorry the one person that noticed tried to rip me a new one it’s the union jacket don’t you know it’s a union jack what’s wrong with you i know just don’t yell at me just they point inwards when you’re turning the opposite way so if you turn your left indicator on and you are going to turn left the part of the union jack

On the left turn signal points inwards as if you’re turning right um jalopnik got a huge piece on it and it was cute and it was good it’s an absolute quirk don’t get too hung up on it because the left side of the vehicle lights up the turn signal so it shouldn’t really matter which way the arrow goes as long as you can see it yeah and that’s what i’ve got to say

About that to quote our friend forrest gump there you go uh you want to jump into the interior and see if we can do this whole thing in one take sure all right um you go first oh i mean it’s a mini inside let’s go over the things we think are cool first the ambient lighting is awesome it’s still in the same spot and it’s great yeah it’s got a switch right at the

Top where you can change the color on the fly you don’t have to dig into menus and stuff that’s the best oh good and it’s just there’s lots of it so it’s all in the inserts here and footwells pockets as well so um that’s a cool thing you you showed me that the volume and the temperature controls adjust with the circle in the middle yeah it’s pretty awesome so if

You want it hot it goes orange if you want to cool it goes blue you crank up the audio and it just kind of gently arcs up and yeah it’s a peculiar shaped screen so it’s circular as you can see but the screen is a long rectangle yeah so i don’t know if it’s wasted space but i know that bmw’s new i4 doesn’t have this but i know we like it the little preset numbers

Yeah at the bottom so i’m happy that minnie’s hung on to that right there’s a lot of legacy stuff going on in here we can get into that in a minute what i don’t love about the circular surround on the square screen and sometimes when you’re trying to touch the stuff and the entire menu controls are on the left side it feels like you have to kind of lean over and poke

In to reach them so that’s not great but i love the idrive controller or the mini connect mini connected controller uh you’re more of a touchscreen i am a more of a touchscreen person and we kind of kind of found that out about her through the bmws we’ve had yeah like why aren’t you just using the thing no i just find it easier to stab yeah but um interestingly

No android auto in this car a little bit of legacy bmw mini stuff going on there you can get apple carplay but you have to spring for the 9 000 package to get just even apple carplay now it’s wireless so that’s good which is great there’s a bunch of other cool things that come with it yeah but in 2022 that’s ridiculous to expect to pay people to pay that much to

Get access to something that’s standard in almost everything else a whole bunch of other cars yeah it’s crazy heated seats too yeah heated seats you have to buy a package i know now that’s a little bit of price let’s call it finagling that they’ve done because it’s the base price for this is just under 45 and in canada that means you get access to some incentives

I think it’s 2500 federally 2500 in quebec and you can stack those in 4 000 in bc so that does bring the price down in those markets but for most people you’re paying the 45 base but then you’re gonna add a package on because you’re gonna want at least the heated seats or something else so it’s not actually that price it’s a fair bit more are your hands cold

Why do you ask because my the vents are right here also oh also because yeah there you go took us a little while to find the heated steering wheel button we didn’t even realize there was a heated steering wheel included in this so we saw on the package list and we went come on really yes it’s here on the side of the steering column where you would expect like

Yeah exactly and with bmw’s it’s in the bottom of the uh spoke that goes down so thankfully it’s summer yeah but it feels like summer it’s springish right lousy smart another cool thing uh trough of the interior is the steering wheel and the digital dash are one piece so if you want to adjust the wheel higher or lower everything goes with you so you still have

That clean line of sight all the way through which is great um i love the panoramic sunroof but it’s part of the premiere plus package right exactly i would probably get if i was if i was buying this and i do want to have the buyers for morris thing i would yeah i just pay the 9100 bucks and get all the things right so yeah um so we’re driving you’re driving i am

Driving do you remember the power numbers off the top i sure do all right go for it it’s a three liter no no no my numbers are gonna be green correct i have them right in my head come on you can do this it’s a 1.53 liter uh turbocharged engine and it’s got 221 horsepower 284 pound-feet of torque now that’s the combined electric and the uh battery power as well

It’s a 7.6 kilowatt hour battery an electric all-wheel drive is standard there’s something that’s standard on this car sorry that was extreme snark that’s okay that’s okay so on the fuel consumption side it’s a little higher than i would have thought i’m still have in that up to 29 kilometers of range but for liters parker kilometers you’re at 8.1 in the city and

7.9 on the highway and you cut those in half you put them together and you put them in the blender and you snap your fingers and you get 8.0 even for a combined uh they’re just 100 kilometers that’s the gas engine numbers on its own though right right so there is a 3.2 liters equivalent per hundred kilometers that is when you’re using the 29 kilometers of electric

Range right as much as possible um and our cans got a calculation for how they figure those numbers out based on average usage i think a lot of people unless you’re truly going to plug this in every night are not going to see figures that low right but it’s it’s possible not probable power is fine not exceptional it is enough um it would be nice if you had a

Longer electric range because that’s 29 kilometers for the average canadian when we were commuting it’s not enough um and it gets burned up pretty fast yeah right so i think that helps to improve the drive feel a fair bit um we’ve spent a lot of time not charged and it’s still been okay i think you still get the the hybrid drive feel and you get the the kick from

The electric motors um so that part of it’s not my issue the thing that we both found when we were driving this car is that it seems to be impossible to stop it smoothly we had are we 16 and learning how to drive all over again moments for most of the weekend yeah remember we have these for only seven days at a time and the majority of people will have this

At least on a short two year lease so you will find that pressure point on your right foot in the brake pedal to be able to do the proper gentle you finally got it down but it was pretty the last time we had the car together before this yeah and it’s it wasn’t a way that you would naturally drive no i was on a slight incline like all right let’s let gravity do

Something let’s maybe do something yeah so i mean the one thing that every mini has going forward is the handling this thing is a ton of fun to drive we took it for a little bit of a spirited drive it’s sort of you know they talk about how the wheels are pushed to the corners and you get that go-kart-like handling and that is accurate i think we find absolutely

Um but yeah i don’t the rest of that i don’t i don’t love the way it drives i don’t love the way it feels to be honest for the phev or just the phpv specifically so you maybe lean towards the gasoline if i was going to buy a mini yeah if i was going to buy a media buy the real mini the three door yeah exactly but all right so i guess we can kind of wrap it up there

Just i feel a little bit like your value that proposition is better with something else unless you uh and here’s a here’s a checklist for you if you live in bc or bc or quebec and you can take advantage of those incentives do it if you understand you’re not paying 45 000 for this car and you’re prepared to pay more and if owning a mini is really what you want

Consider this car absolutely outside of that i think when you’re looking in the luxury segment compact suvs for plug-in hybrid options we’ve gone over a few of them the lexus nx lincoln corsair those are some of our videos out there that you can check out i think you’ve got better value to find elsewhere in the segment

Transcribed from video
Modern Motoring – A Quick Spin review with the 2022 MINI Countryman SE PHEV – Plugging away By Modern Mississauga Media