ZEV Mini-E presentation

I found a post on the Plugs and Cars Blog about a presentation given on Tuesday by Richard Steinberg, Mini-E program manager. There was a reference about the presentation including mention about Mini considering lease extensions. Sure enough right there at the end of the presentation he mentions that it is being investigated to address a bridge to a next vehicle.

Rich, please think about cutting us some slack on the monthly payments.

go Bantams

My brother happens to be a coach at his alma mater.

This was presented at the California EPA Air Resources Board (CARB) 2009 ZEV Symposium

12v Aux Power - can it be configured to stay on when charging?

One of the things that I quickly noticed about the Mini-E was that the 12v power ports shut down when the car is off. My other car leaves them on which is great for charging phones / navigation, etc. Normally I would understand why you would not want this in the Mini-E. But when it is charging there should be no downside. Does anyone know if this can be enabled?

If you are really going to make a 2-seater Mini anyway.....

I am sure the twin-turbo, blah-blah-blah motor would be nice in this thing. But imagine how nice a fully-tuned, not power taken away electric coupe Mini would would be. Now this is a car I would pay a premium for.

Hopefully not just in powder-blue though....

Mini-E UK field trial (registration soon)

OK,
So if you know anyone in the UK who is really jealous that we are zipping around in our electric Mini-E's, apparently they have assigned 20 (according to this article) cars which will be available for 2 different 6 month cycles starting in Dec of 09. The UK is also subsidizing the lease payments so they will be £330 a month rather than the £550 that BMW are asking (actually a bit steeper than ours before the subsidy). I don't think the official UK site is actually accepting applications yet, so there is still time to get your UK friends interested.

UPDATED: Electric Usage - 8c/mi (if my math is right)

So I finally remembered to grab the PSE&G bill on he way in the door to ID the usage and billing compared to the numbers I have been logging. Here is the view of my data. I hear that we have expensive electricity in NJ so I am curious how this compares to Ca. Also there are like 5 different rate tiers in my 1 bill that spread the costs across each tier. These represent the average'd prices.

Does this look correct to everyone? How am I doing against the group? Did I mention that I like to drive fast?