With an EV on the Way, Mini's Looking for Partners and Thinking Hard About the U.S.

Steph Willems
by Steph Willems

Mini faces a fork in the road in the United States. The retro-themed brand, reintroduced in the U.S. marketplace in 2002 by parent company BMW Group, needs to decide what it wants to be. Sales are falling as consumer tastes evolve towards larger vehicles. New technologies are cropping up at a rapid pace. What is the child of the British Motor Corporation, British Leyland, Rover Group, and BMW Group to do?

BMW Group management board member Peter Schwarzenbauer knows the brand needs to evolve — and not just in the U.S., where the brand reach a high point in 2013. After announcing a new electric Mini Cooper Hardtop (Mini E) for 2019, Schwarzenbauer took some time to address its U.S. plans.

“It’s really only in the U.S. where we are facing this with Mini,” he told Reuters, referring to declining sales in the face of crossover competition. In Europe, which lacks many of the rolling behemoths found here, Mini’s offerings appears much more right-sized to customers. The brand expects another record year of global sales.

Schwarzenbauer knows the brand can’t go larger. And it won’t. The Clubman and Countryman will remain the largest vehicles in Mini’s U.S. lineup, with no Mini Canyonero XL on the horizon. Instead, Mini just needs to find a new way for people to drive (or ride in) its vehicles.

The BMW exec feels the only way forward in the U.S. is to build “the Mini brand in the direction of the electric urban mobility company.” Ugh, there’s that word again. Banded about by much larger automakers looking for new revenue streams, “mobility” can mean any number of things. In this case, Schwarzenbauer likely means ride-sharing (and possibly ride-hailing) services, each stocked with Mini vehicles.

BMW Group already owns two car-sharing subsidiaries — DriveNow, operating in nine European countries, and ReachNow, launching in three U.S. cities last year.

But what kind of vehicles will they be? The Cooper Hardtop electric, something the brand spend a decade developing, is an obvious possibility. That vehicle uses a heavily modified BMW i3 drivetrain. However, stuffing a battery pack with useable range into a small vehicle is a large task, something Mini continues to struggle with. The automaker is now on the hunt for a technology partner.

“We are talking to many OEMs around the world, not only in China, (about) how to electrify smaller cars,” Schwarzenbauer said. “There’s no final conclusion on it.”

He speculates that the brand could one day become an all-electric entity, and not just in America. “[BMW Group] made this decision to add the [Mini E] because we saw, especially in urban areas, emissions-free mobility is becoming increasingly important,” Schwarzenbauer told Automotive News Europe. “Mini is an urban brand, so it’s a natural evolution to electrify. We already have a lot of experience with electric mobility at Mini.”

Still, he wants future Mini owners to always have the option of driving the car themselves, even if it’s outfitted with autonomous driving technology.

Mini brand sales sank 10.4 percent in the U.S. last month. Through the end of November, 2017 sales have fallen 10.3 percent compared to 2016. In terms of individual models, the only Mini vehicles to see a sales increase this year are the Countryman and low-volume Cooper Convertible.

[Image: BMW Group]

Steph Willems
Steph Willems

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  • Sector 5 Sector 5 on Dec 07, 2017

    BMW's on track with a small, suburban eM. Only American doesn't like small cars and only buys them on sufferance of gas prices. I'm surprised there's never been a Moke edition. Along mini-SUV lines - if you'll pardon the pun. Though I guess the monies better spent now on electrification. Don't enjoy the go-cart ride.

  • 993cc 993cc on Dec 07, 2017

    Ugh. Enough with the "mobility" already! It seems every European carmaker who can't sell cars here wants to sell us "mobility". First PSA group. Now MINI. Who's next? Wartburg?

  • Rochester "better than Vinfast" is a pretty low bar.
  • TheMrFreeze That new Ferrari looks nice but other than that, nothing.And VW having to put an air-cooled Beetle in its display to try and make the ID.Buzz look cool makes this classic VW owner sad 😢
  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
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