11,000 Minis: Big milestone for small Mini Electric

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Mini has produced 11,000 Mini Electric EV hatchbacks at the UK’s Oxford production line in nine months.

The success story of Mini production is extending into the electric age, with the company confirming healthy build numbers of its first battery-powered model.

Eleven thousand examples of the Mini Electric have been built since production commenced at the facility in Cowley, Oxfordshire in November last year. Three thousand orders for the car have been placed in the UK alone since its launch, though Australia (also a right-hand drive market), has been less ambitions in its own sales targets, bringing less than 100 units so far.

This means the UK is the second-largest market for electrified Minis, taking 19 per cent of all Electric and Countryman S E plug-in hybrid sales. The company predicts that a third of three-door Minis produced will be electric by 2021.

Although the production figure is some way off the number of Nissan Leafs usually built annually in the UK’s Sunderland plant (21,000 in 2018), it’s a strong figure for a new product launched prior to a global pandemic that has caused factory closures and a fall in demand for new cars. The two are price rivals here, though the Leaf offers two more doors in hatchback guise.

The positive announcement from Mini comes at the same time as the Society of Manufacturer and Motor Traders announces a dramatic slump in UK car production for the first half of 2020. Production fell 42.8 per cent year-on-year to the lowest figure since post-war rationing was lifted in 1954.

Lawrence Allan

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