Legendary automaker Mini has debuted the Mini Aceman, the first EV from the brand to be built on an entirely electric platform.
Yes, your eyes didn’t deceive you my friend, that is an LED light array on the grille in the shape of a union jack. You could not make this stuff up.
Mini is an interesting company that exists today for self referential purposes, harking back to when the brand actually made an interesting, valuable automobile with a unique aesthetic.
The original Mini was a tiny vehicle, coming about during a fuel crisis, smaller than most other cars on the market at the time. It was an urban explorer and was massively successful in both road and rally championships.
Jump ahead to today, and all that Mini is doing to evoke the legacy of the Mini is pay homage to the style of the original car and symbols of British pride, but it turns it into a completely unrelated SUV build.
But perhaps we’re being too hard on the Mini Aceman, an electric vehicle pitched at the time of another fuel crisis.
“The Mini Concept Aceman provides an initial glimpse of a completely new vehicle, bridging the space between the Mini Cooper and the Mini Countryman in the model family’s future,” said Stefanie Wurst, the head of the Mini brand.
“This concept car reflects how Mini is reinventing itself for its all-electric future and what the brand stands for: an electrified go-kart feel, an immersive digital experience and a strong focus on a minimal environmental footprint.”
Mini says that the Aceman is the first crossover vehicle pitched at the premium small cars market. To their credit, it does appear to be smaller than most SUVs on the road, especially in Australia. It has an exterior length of 4 metres, a width of 2 metres and a height of 1.6 metres, with 20-inch wheels.
Let’s also just touch on the aesthetic. Exterior-wise, the car blends a bubbly aesthetic with straight, cyberpunk panelling.
Retaining that classic Mini aesthetic that I was harping on about earlier, the Aceman does away with an open grille, replacing it with a metal panel covered in LEDs on the top half and on the headlights.
Actually, touching on the grille just quickly, the union jack is not the only light array the Mini can show. The union jack shows up when the car is unlocked, but concept images also showed these patterns.
The interior, fit for five people, includes this jarring circular OLED infotainment system, to create “a unique interior experience that remains unmistakably Mini”. The operating system of the Aceman will be built on the Android open source project software pack, the first Mini to have this.
As for specs, Mini was quite light on them in the press release. Wired predicts that range will be somewhat similar to the upcoming “classic” three-door electric Mini, capable of between 300km and 400km range depending on the model. Not a gigantic range, but perfect for the urban explorer.
Keep in mind that much of this information could change as the vehicle is developed.
Mini plans to be all-electric from 2025, with all models electric by the 2030s.
The Mini Aceman will make its public debut at… Gamescom 2022 in Cologne? That’s on August 23, 2022, if you’re headed over. Obviously no plans for an Australian launch just yet. But here are the electric cars you can get in Australia.