Mini Countryman Electric long-term test: report 5

The car Mini Countryman Electric Exclusive Run by Chris Haining, sub-editor

Why it’s here To find out whether Mini's electric family SUV has what it takes as a comfortable, versatile daily workhorse 

Needs to Handle a long motorway commute without stopping to recharge; be at home in the great outdoors as it is in the urban jungle

Mileage 8302 List price £44,580 Target Price £43,700 Price as tested £49,600 Official range 286 miles Test range 242 miles 

23 February 2025 – Looking forward to the past

More than ever before, the interiors of the latest family of Minis – including my Mini Countryman E – have been designed to visually echo that of the original Austin Mini Minor of 1959. Just like in that masterpiece of minimalist design, there’s an almost total absence of buttons, controls and gauges; it has only a big, round screen where the original had a centrally mounted speedometer, and a small lozenge of switches beneath – lighting and choke in the original; gears and driving modes for the Countryman.

Visually, it's great. This simplicity gives a clean, ordered look. And the screen feels good, too. It stands a little way proud of the rest of the dashboard, and the way it’s mounted feels much more solid than in some cars with tablet-style “floating” infotainment systems – I’m looking at you, Mercedes C-Class. The mounting is made from a sturdy-feeling plastic that I initially mistook to be metal, so rigid and cold to the touch does it feel. 

That all said, I’m certain that slavishly pastiching a minimalist 1959 dashboard design is the wrong approach for a hefty Family SUV in 2025. Yes, there are loads of cars – including the Tesla Model 3 – with a central screen and no other instruments, but that’s a feature we tolerate rather than celebrate.

In addition, the Model 3’s rectangular 15.4in screen is a lot bigger than the Mini’s round 9.6in item, and with your speed displayed near the screen's right-hand edge, it’s not too far from the driver’s eye-line. By contrast, in the Mini, you have to glance a long way to the left, and even farther to see things like the headlamps-on or left-hand indicator telltales.

Fortunately, my car has the optional head-up display (this comes as part of the £2500 Level One and £5000 Level Two packs – my car has the latter), putting a speed display dead ahead of me. However, it’s not the kind of set-up that projects info onto the windscreen where it has the effect of hanging in the air somewhere ahead of the bonnet, like that of my previous Audi A6 Avant. Instead, it uses a small screen on the dashboard, so it’s more like just having a regular instrument cluster.

So… why not just have a regular instrument cluster? After all, the centrally-mounted speedometer was only found in the earliest (or, latterly, the cheapest) Minis. By the early '80s, all but the most basic Mini had a pod of instruments just behind the steering wheel. And given the sheer amount of vacant dashboard space in front of the driver in a Countryman E, what better way to separate the model from the much smaller, cheaper Cooper hatch than by giving it an instrument pod? It would still be true to Mini's heritage, after all.

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