Mini Aceman review: A practical all-electric upgrade from the smaller Cooper

There’s a lot to like here. From the reasonable price – less than £2,000 more than the smaller Mini Cooper – to the funky styling and characterful interior that has space for four full-size adults. The Aceman also drives well, and although not particularly quick, it rides more comfortably than the firmer, sportier Mini Cooper.

We found it to be very efficient, albeit on Mini’s prescribed test route and across Denmark’s Lurpak-smooth roads, and the infotainment system works well, but the circular interface takes a bit of getting used to.

Charge speeds aren’t great – in fact, at 70 kW the base model’s is even worse than the also-slow Cooper. This is especially disappointing since the Aceman is an all-new car built to be exclusively electric. There’s also a fair bit of hard plastic in the otherwise-refined cabin, but the Aceman’s charm and distinctive styling still win us over.

I spent around four hours in the Aceman SE on a driving route around Copenhagen. The route covered about 135 miles of mostly country roads, with some town and city driving, and a short motorway stint.

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Independent rating: 7/10

A spiritual successor to the Mini Clubman, the new Aceman is the first Mini to be offered exclusively as an EV, with no petrol version available. It slots between the similarly-priced Cooper hatchback and the larger, pricier Countryman SUV, and is described as a crossover for the premium small car segment.

The new mid-size Mini comes in two variants, called the E and SE; both have a single motor powering the front wheels and both use a 400-volt electrical system. The former starts at £31,800 and has a 42.5 kWh battery pack with a claimed range of up to 192 miles and a 0-62 mph time of 7.9 seconds. It charges at a maximum rate of just 70 kW, for a 10-80 percent charge time of 28 minutes.

Spend £36,300 and you get the Aceman SE, which has a larger 54.2 kWh battery, a longer range of up to 252 miles, a quicker 0-62 mph time of 7.1 seconds and speedier charging, but which still only manages 95 kW. A top-up from 10 to 80 percent takes 31 minutes.

Despite its middling performance claims, the Aceman SE feels plenty quick enough at lower speeds. It also provides a smoother and more comfortable ride than the firmer, sportier Cooper SE, and is generally a pleasant, relaxing car to drive.

The Aceman’s interior is roomier than that of the Cooper, making it an attractive option for young families who have outgrown the three-door Mini.

The dashboard is broadly the same as the Cooper and Countryman, with a large circular display at its centre, but Mini has let its designers have some fun here. Harking back to the Aceman concept from 2022, the production car has a fabric dashboard with multicoloured patterns, and details that look like luggage straps on the dash’ and steering wheel. It’s design for design’s sake, but gives the cabin a nice dose of character.

Rear seat space is much improved over the Cooper, with good knee room and adequate headroom even for adults. However, the glass panoramic roof of our test car, while a nice addition, seems to rob some headroom. It’s fine back there, but obviously not as spacious as the larger Countryman. A 6ft passenger could sit behind an equally tall driver without too many complaints, unlike in the smaller Cooper. Both versions of Aceman have 300 litres of boot space, but there’s no additional storage under the bonnet.

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Mini’s new circular touchscreen is a clever (and attractive) bit of technology, but its user interface takes some getting used to. The system feels a bit cluttered at first, but after a couple of hours behind the wheel you soon learn where everything is – like the settings menu – and how to interact with key controls like cabin temperature and the navigation system.

The nav is pretty good – so good, in fact, we’d consider using it instead of Google Maps, although drivers will be reassured to know the Aceman comes with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto as standard. And yes, they actually look quite good on the circular screen, since their wallpapers fill the display and the car’s key controls remain visible at all times.

We found the voice assistant would frequently interrupt conversations with our passenger, mistakenly thinking we were talking to it. And, while Mini says the cars we drove were not pre-production – the usual get-out when functions don’t work properly on launch drives – the user interface occasionally glitched during our day of driving. Not a deal-breaker, but frustrating nonetheless.

There are some physical controls, including a key-like switch for starting the car and a toggle switch for flicking between the Aceman’s many drive modes – including Go-Kart, complete with (optional) sci-fi engine sound effects.

Lastly, upgrading to the Level 2 options kit includes a Harman Kardon sound system, plus the aforementioned glass roof.

Despite it being noticeably larger than the Mini Cooper, the entry-level £31,800 Aceman is just £1,800 more expensive than the cheapest electric version of its smaller sibling. For drivers who want a Mini on their drive but need extra space – and slightly more range, too – the Aceman makes a lot of financial sense. It is equally as efficient as the smaller car, according to Mini’s own figures, so running costs should be about the same.

As always with an EV, running costs will depend largely on how much you pay for electricity at home, and how often you use pricier public chargers. During our four-hour drive of the Aceman we saw an average efficiency, according to the car’s own computer, of 13.9 kWh per 100 km. That’s 4.47 miles per kWh, which is a great result and even better than Mini’s own claim, although the driving route included very little motorway and we rarely went over 60 mph. A cruise at 70 mph in the UK or 80 mph in Europe will see that figure fall.

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The Mini Aceman isn’t particularly quick to charge. The E variant can only take on power at up to 70 kW, which is a little behind the smaller Mini Cooper, while the range-topping SE can only manage 90 kW. In both cases, a fill from 10 to 80 percent takes between at least 28 and 31 minutes. Filling from zero to 100 percent with a 7.4 kW home charge takes between about seven and nine hours.

Despite being larger, more practical and generally more grown up, the Aceman starts at just £1,800 more than the Mini Cooper, making it feel like good value.

No. Unlike the smaller Mini Cooper and larger Mini Countryman, which are both available with the choice of petrol engines or electric motors, the Aceman is exclusively an EV.

If you’ve outgrown the Cooper but don’t need the much larger (and more expensive) Countryman, the all-new Aceman adds competitively-priced practicality to the classic Mini recipe.