An All-Electric Mini-Cooper?

Michael Graham was tired of riding the Midtown Direct to work in Manhattan, and wasn't fazed by the lengthy online application to lease one of BMW's 500 all-electric Mini Es. The false error message and various mini-essays may even have siphoned off some of the competition.

"I think they probably weeded a lot of people out with the questionnaire alone," said Graham, 40, who's an IT director for a financial services company and first read about the Mini E field trial through the RSS feed of a technology blog.

After completing the application late last year and meeting requirements like having a garage to charge the car in, living in the New York or Los Angeles metropolitan areas, and being willing to write a blog, Graham obtained a one-year lease for No. 269, which he picked up from a Morristown dealership on Friday and first drove to work on Monday. He'll pay $850 a month to lease the car—a 2008 Mini Cooper S retrofitted to run on electricity—and had to have a $1,500 panel replacement to ensure that his home's electrical system meets its capacity. However, BMW pays for collision insurance, and gas is, obviously, a non-issue.

Graham is adjusting to the fluctuations in his new commute—it took him an hour and 20 minutes to drive to his office on Monday and 40 minutes on Tuesday—but he's largely acclimated to driving an electric car. One major difference is quietness, since the Mini E doesn't have a motor, but the biggest adjustment is to braking. Graham says he drives without using the car's brake pedal 95 percent of the time, since it decelerates and comes to a halt quickly once a driver lifts his foot from the "gas" pedal, which also has implications for coasting. "The only time I use the brake is when I'm at a light and I'm in an incline up," said Graham, who explained the brake is necessary in these cases to keep the car from rolling. It also accelerates much more quickly than a normal car, though BMW detuned it to make acceleration from 0 to 20 mph more gradual.

There are some obvious drawbacks, since the Mini E is a two-seater and its battery pack is placed where the back seat should be. For this reason, Graham plans to use it as a commuting car, since he has a 4-month-old and a 20-month-old. And the Mini E can only run for a maximum of 150 miles before it needs to be recharged—though the charge tends to last longer in "stop and go" drives like Graham's commute, since the Mini E has regenerative braking technology, allowing it to convert braking energy into electricity and store it in the battery.

However, part of Graham's reason for signing up for the field test was to gauge whether electric cars are feasible, and he's already satisfied on that front. "The biggest thing is, you're not sacrificing anything," said Graham, referring to a misconception that electric cars are essentially a larger version of golf carts.

At the end of a year, Graham will return the car to BMW, and it will be taken apart and tested. Other parties are interested in the trial, and PSE&G has installed a second meter in Graham's home between the car's charger and the panel to gauge how much power it draws and the effect on grid demand if electric cars became commonplace. (However, Graham is still using a normal 110-volt outlet that connects to the car with an orange cord; BMW is still waiting on approvals for the 230-volt, 32-amp charger installed in Graham's garage, which would work more quickly and efficiently.)

For Graham, who's a gadget lover, leasing the car is ultimately a quality of life issue—though he also could have had a high-end car for the same price he pays for the Mini. "I'd rather sit in traffic and listen to the radio and be in control of my own destiny," he said.