Mini all electric by early 2030s, first BMW brand to ditch petrol

It’s official – Mini will produce its last petrol-powered car in about a decade.

The sun is setting on Mini’s loveable run of perky petrol engines, the brand set to shift entirely to EVs by the early 2030s.

In announcing its financial results and revealing the all-new BMW i4, Mini owner BMW confirmed the quintessentially British brand would soon be silent.

“Mini will be the first BMW Group brand to go fully electric,” said BMW chairman Oliver Zipse in a global livestream media event.

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“Mini is pre-destined for the city and thus for e-mobility.”

Zipse made the major Mini announcement as BMW stated it would not drop petrol and diesel engine prematurely for its main brand, arguing some markets may not be ready to turn off fossil fuels within a decade.

But for Mini – which aims heavily at younger buyers and sells smaller cars predominantly driven in built-up areas – that’s less of a consideration.

“In 2025 we will be releasing the last model with a combustion engine variant,” said Zipse. “By the early 2030s Mini will be exclusively fully electric.”

So all those rorty four-cylinders that help make the high-performance JCW sub-brand what it is and the characterful three-cylinder turbos will be killed off.

It’ll be an intense decade of change for Mini. Currently the only electric Mini in the unimaginatively named Mini Electric.

The Mini Electric sells from $59,900 and can only travel about 170km between charges.

That raises obvious questions about the suitability of Minis that will rely solely on electricity.

But during the two-hour press conference BMW executives said there would be “major leaps ahead” in battery technology every three or four years for at least another decade.

The company also said it was only a few years away from price parity between its electric models and the current petrol and diesel versions.

And Mini isn’t the only BMW Group brand switching to electricity.

“You can also expect to see fully electric products from Rolls-Royce as well,” said Zipse.

While he stopped short of suggesting Rolls-Royce would ditch its petrol engines anytime soon – some Rolls-Royce owners would have nothing else but a twin-turbocharged V12! – there are few brands suited to the refinement and torque nature of an electric motor.

One aftermarket conversion company is even charging big bucks to transform classic Rolls-Royces into EVs.