It’s not just BMW that is reinventing the cars it’s most known for. Its youthful subsidiary Mini has also redesigned its three-door hatch entirely, now sporting the name most people called it anyway—the Mini Cooper. It’s also now fully electric, sporting several upgrades over the cute but flawed current-generationFirstly, it should be noted that the new Mini Cooper isn’t a pure BMW product.
While the new Mini Cooper retains the same upright, wheel-at-each-corner stance as its predecessor, the brand’s unmistakable design language has seen a wholesale revamp. Gone is the clamshell bonnet, front fender “scuttles”, black wheel arch extensions and dependence on chrome components—all part of the company’s new “Charismatic Simplicity” design language.
The touchscreen runs on the Mini Operating System 9, an Android-based full-touch interface that eliminates the rotary controller on the centre console. It incorporates the air-conditioning controls, a cloud-based navigation system , widgets on the home screen, a row of menu and shortcut buttons at the bottom and a “Hey Mini” voice control system.