LOS ANGELES - At low speed, the loudest noise in this new Mini E comes from the turn signal. We're tooling around LA in Mini's zero-emissions, electric-drive-only coupe, which has just been introduced to the world motor press as a prelude to the Los Angeles International Auto Show. It's quiet, it's peppy, it's heavy because of the batteries on board, and it's cheap to run with a fill-up costing about $3.50 of electricity.. The Mini E is a limited 2008 production run of 500 cars with limited seating (two not four) and limited range (150 miles); successors to the Mini E could be part of the future of mainstream alternative-energy transportation once the price of the car comes down. Cost aside (Mini isn't talking, but $100,000-plus wouldn't be high), the Mini E is way cool to drive and to be seen in.

Mini E slideshow: Click Here

Here are my impressions:

-- Acceleration is good. Quick but not lightning quick and about what you'd expect from an electric-motor car with lots of zero-rpm torque. If you've ever been karting, or driven a riding mower, it's the same sensation.
-- Deceleration is awesome. Take your foot off the gas and it's as if you're on the brakes.Regeneration isn't subtle as on a Prius, it's vigorous, almost forceful. Mini wants to convert every bit of forward- motion energy into power in the battery. After a couple tries, I was able to consistently use throttle-off, no brakes, to come to a stop at stop lights.
-- Torque steer under acceleration was noticeable. Step hard on the throttle and the car wants to dart left or right. Accelerate gently and there's no problem.
-- Almost-silent travel can be a problem for pedestrians who don't look left-right when jaywalking, or the occasional flock of pigeons hunting food on the side of the road. (On my drive, both pedestrians and pigeons survived.)

The Mini E is quick getting away from stoplights because of the inherent nature of electric motors. They provide maximum torque, or power, at standstill. Throttle response is different from gasoline-engine cars and it takes a few minutes to adapt. Step hard on the gas (so to speak) going around corners and you'll feel serious torque steer, meaning the car wants to steer more than you intended. It's also funeral home quiet until around 20 mph. Shades of the famous Rolls-Royce advertisement from Olgivy & Mather, "At 60 mph the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock."

Because there's not much noise from the electric motor, you notice things such as the turn signal, or the loud stereo of the car next to you at the stoplight. Past 20 mph, road noise comes into play and then you don't notice the missing combustion engine noises. Lift off the throttle and battery regeneration kicks in, as on a hybrid, and the drag created by the motor running as a generator is noticeable. Compared to a gasoline-engine car, there's no coasting and no gradual slowdown. You're under power or under active deceleration, it seems.

You're constantly reminded how much battery power is left. What had been the tachometer, the saucer-size dish directly in front of the driver, now shows remaining battery life both on the big analog dial and also as a digital readout at the base of the analog gauge. The even-bigger saucer in the middle of the dash, the speedometer, has a power meter: the circular array of LEDs that on the gasoline Mini was the fuel gauge. The number of lit segments shows your power draw under acceleration, your power drain under deceleration.

3,230 pounds of road-hugging weight
Then there's the weight. With driver and passenger aboard and almost no luggage, which is essentially the Mini E's luggage capacity (call it 2-3 gym bags), it feels heavy rebounding from bumps or cornering briskly because of all those batteries on board. Mini says the Mini E weighs 3,230 pounds, 507 more than the Cooper S on which it's based. One of the Mini talking points is that the Mini E's tonnage isn't really more weight than if you had two adults in the back seat. (When you hear the same thing from three executives, that's a talking point.) However: The only adults likely to be in the back seat of a gasoline-engine Mini are jockeys or anorexics, not 250-pound Texas Tech linebackers, so it really is heavier than a typical fully laden Mini.

Under the hood (and in the former back seat)
The Mini E begins life as a painted Mini Cooper S body shell coming off the line in Oxford, England. It's shipped to Munich, BMW's headquarters town, for installation of the drivetrain. That's an electric motor under the hood and a one-speed transmission. The motor is rated at 150 kW or 200 hp and Mini rates acceleration at 8.5 seconds 0-62 mph with a top speed of 95 mph. That's lightning-fast for the 1970s and pretty adequate today.

The statistics on the battery pack read like this: 5,088 3.7-volt lithium-ion rechargeable batteries, no different from what goes into most notebook computers. Just 5,082 more batteries than in most laptops and 500 pounds more weight for the cells. Fifty-three batteries configured in parallel go into what Mini calls a unit and two units hooked in series constitute a module producing 7.4 volts of power. (This is getting boring in a hurry, but relax; it's almost over.) Forty-eight modules in series produce 365 volts and constitute the battery pack that ate the rear seat. The battery pack and controller, a big box under the hood that looks like a Sawzall case, come from AC Propulsion of San Dimas (near Los Angeles), Calif. There was some tongue-clucking among journalists at the launch who felt it less than environmentally pristine that batteries for a car being sold in the U.S. were shipped to Germany rather than being retrofitted here.

That's non-stop computing
For what it's worth, if you hooked a laptop to this battery pack, it would run your computer for almost half a year. Even Northwest can't dream of snowy-day-in-Detroit flight delays lasting that long.

The wall-mount transformer module draws 220 volts and as much as 48 amps peak, allowing for a 2.5- to 3-hour recharge. That comes with the car. There's also a 120-volt connection that draws 12 amps and takes overnight (sometimes as much as 24 hours) to recharge the car. Based on typical U.S. energy prices, the quick recharge works out to around $3.50 to recharge the battery pack. If every tenth household in America had electric cars and recharged at the same time, that would put a dent in our power supplies. Longer term, this is a reason for electric companies to institute off-peak reduced rates. There's lots of power available in the middle of the night, and what's on-line tends to be cheap: nuclear needs to run flat out round-the-clock and hydro is essentially free once you build the turbines and fish ladders.

Mostly, it's a Mini
Driving around town, the Mini E will feel like any other Mini Cooper. All 500 test fleet cars are the same, other than number plates just above the front wheels. You're likely to get a lot of friendly waves since the cars are easily identifiable through the yellow graphics. The test fleet will have two-tone gray paint (Dark Silver below, Pure Silver on top) with bright Interchange Yellow graphics. Insidide, there's bright yellow interior trim with black accents. There's a radio / CD player and USB / iPod connector but no navigation systems on the identically prepared test car fleet. The transmission is automatic (a one-speed gearbox).

Seats are cloth, perhaps to keep the discomfort of winter's chill from affecting the East Coaster testers since there's no electric seat heaters. (There is air conditioning.) But that's the price of being the only one on your block to have a zero-emissions vehicle and announce your concern for the earth more than a dozen Sierra Club memberships. "As you approach a new technology," says BMW Group's Wolfgang Armbrecht, "as far as levels of comfort, there may be a little bit less."

Who qualifies to lease a Mini E
BMW Group, parent company to Mini, is offering the Mini E's only in the U.S., in California, New Jersey, and New York, for those with a penchant to pay $850 a month (no cash down) for a one-year lease, after which Mini gets the car back and sees how it fared. The bulk of the fleet will go to everyday Joe the plumber (before he became Joe the Plumber) types, although some will wind up in the hands of the Hollywood types who get photographed a lot for People magazine. Want to be considered? Sign up at the Mini USA site. You also need to have a lockable garage, Mini says.

Should you buy (lease)?
Economically, the sensibility of the Mini E equals the emissions from the tailpipe: zero. You can lease or buy a very-low-emissions two-seater with no luggage room for half to a third of the $850 Mini requires. But on an emotional level, there's little not to like. You'd be a pioneer in what amounts to a huge change - "change we need"? - brewing in the way we get from A to B. Today, zero-emissions vehicles are wildly expensive without subsidies. This is one giant step toward the future. And it keeps the automobile as part of the transportation mix. "For me, one thing is clear," declared BMW Group's Dr. Friedrich Eichiner of BMW's board of management at the announcement on a second-floor terrace of the Beverly Wilshire (Julia Roberts and "Pretty Woman") Hotel. "Individual mobility will still play a role in our future. The automobile will continue to guarantee individual mobility."