MINI Cooper Electric – Road trip report: Southend to South West France

Pete drove from Southend to South West France in his all-electric MINI Cooper SE 32.6kWh 2022.

Introducing your road trip

Second long trip for the Mini, a 16-day holiday taking our time on the drive down to take in the French countryside. We went via Le Mans and Perigueux to Torreilles, near Perpignan and returned via Vichy & Versailles. We also took a trip into Spain for a day.

Planning & preparation

With the Mini not having a very big range, planning is essential. As I was planning to use my Electroverse card for charging, I used their map along with Zapmap and Google Maps to list every charger with at least 50kWh on my route. I also carry a Shell Recharge card and have a non-Tesla account as back up. I only ever needed the Electroverse card though!

Charging

Each day when travelling I charged the car five times, mostly around 20 minutes each time with the odd 45 minute charge if stopping for lunch. Overall cost for 2,000 miles was £232. As the Mini only charges at 48kWh I tried to use 50kWh chargers as they are so much cheaper in France at around 28p per kWh. These chargers are usually IONITY and TotalEnergies.

As some chargers were quite a distance apart I had to top up occasionally to make sure I could make the bigger distances between them. The only problems I had charging was where there was only one charger so I had to usually wait around 10 minutes for another car to charge which wasn’t too bad. This is unusual in France as there are normally a lot of chargers available. Also, I had trouble with one charger that kept stopping charge, it took three attempts to get it to work. Other chargers I would recommend are Fastned, Electra, Allego and Engie, they always seem to be reliable.

Did you encounter any great driving roads on your road trip?

Yes, the Millau Viaduct on the A75 is very impressive! On the northern side there is the Aire du Viaduc de Millau where you can get a good view of the viaduct and surrounding valley. Also on the D914 from Argelès-sur-Mer to Platja Grifeu in Spain, this is a coast road with great scenery.

The All-Electric MINI Cooper

Apart from the range, the Mini was great on French motorways as they are mostly empty. I would have the cruise control on at 130kph and just steer. I averaged 4.1 miles per kWh which was pretty good, normally around town at home I get 4.8 per kWh. As there was only two of us the Mini was practical for luggage and we didn’t even need to use the rear seats either. The only downside of the Mini seems to be the sat nav, it’s mostly OK but occasionally sends you to a random place. Google Maps got me out of trouble more than once!

Conclusion

A very successful trip again thanks to the French being ahead of the game with chargers, although they are getting busier each year. This trip was down the western side of France and there were less chargers than last year’s trip down the eastern side. But if I can manage it in a Mini then any of you can have an enjoyable trip, just do your planning and a RFID card is a must. We did come across people that didn’t have one and they failed to charge. We have already booked another trip to the South of France next year!