The Mini Countryman SE Favoured top-spec electric car was award-winning at Drive Car of the Year 2025, but how does the lower-grade Countryman E stack up as a family car?
2025 Mini Countryman E Classic
The Mini Countryman is now in its third generation, with the small SUV the biggest it has ever been, to appeal to a wider customer base.
New for this generation, however, is electric power, with the Countryman range gaining not one but two high-voltage powertrain options, inheriting underpinnings from the related BMW iX1 SUV.
The higher-grade all-wheel-drive Countryman SE Favoured proved it had what it takes to be the pick of the bunch at this year’s Drive Car of the Year awards, winning our Best Small SUV Under $80K gong.
But does the lesser-specced, front-wheel-drive E Classic stand up to the task?
How much is a Mini Countryman?
There are six variants in the Mini Countryman Electric range, offering two distinct electric powertrains alongside three trim levels with varying specification.
At the bottom end, there is the budget Countryman E Core, followed by the Classic, moving up through the range to the Favoured. Then comes the sporty, all-wheel drive SE variants in Classic, Favoured, and JCW Sport trims.
The car I had on test was the Mini Countryman E Classic costing $67,990 before on-road costs, which is the mid-spec trim sandwiched between the entry-level Core and top-of-the-line Favoured.
The Countryman E is powered by a single front-mounted 150kW/250Nm electric motor coupled with a 64.6kWh (net) battery, good for a claimed 462km (WLTP) driving range.
There are seven colours available as standard, with this test car wearing Nanuq White paint complemented by a black roof and mirror caps, and 18-inch Asteroid Spoke silver wheels.
As standard, the Mini Countryman E Classic features heated front seats, a sunroof, augmented-reality satellite navigation system, interior camera, wireless phone charger, sports front seats and steering wheel, a six-speaker sound system, and keyless entry and start.
The Mini Countryman E rivals the likes of the Volvo EX30 and Smart #1 small luxury electric SUVs, but is also competing against highly specified mainstream vehicles such as the Kia EV3.
The Volvo EX30 costs $66,290 (plus ORCs) for the mid-spec Single Motor Extended Range Ultra RWD variant, while the Smart #1 Premium RWD goes for $58,900 (plus ORCs). The Kia EV3 Earth Long Range, admittedly from a mainstream brand, is the only one of the three rivals to also use FWD and retails for $58,600 (plus ORCs).
However, for similar money to the Mini you can get a Smart #1 or a Kia EV3 in their range-topping form, with the Smart #1 Brabus costing $67,900 and the Kia EV3 GT-Line $63,950.
| Key details | 2025 Mini Countryman E Classic |
| Price | $67,990 plus on-road costs |
| Colour of test car | Nanuq White |
| Options | N/A |
| Price as tested | $67,990 plus on-road costs |
| Drive-away price | $74,356 |
| Rivals | Volvo EX30 | Smart #1 | Kia EV3 |
Mini Countryman best deals
There are plenty of great deals on a Mini Countryman that can be found here at Drive Marketplace.
Find your nearest Mini dealer here to check the Countryman E out in real life and go for a test drive yourself.
For more on the Mini Countryman range, including pricing, specifications and offers, click here.
How big is a Mini Countryman?
Compared to its closest rivals, the Mini has a longer wheelbase, but is almost the same height as the Smart #1 and the same width as the Kia EV3.
While many diehard Mini loyalists might say this is a bad thing, because it’s not true to the brand’s history, for a young family there is enough room to make it work as a daily runaround.
In the front there is a decent amount of leg room and small areas of space to put things, including two main cupholders that are able to accommodate even larger drink bottles over one litre, as well as space in the doors.
While the Countryman doesn’t have a centre console bin, there is space in an open compartment on the floor for items like sunglasses, a book, wallet etc, and a mini storage box that can fit things like keys or anything else small you’d rather keep out of sight.
There’s also a nice little shelf mounted underneath the controls to store your phone where it won’t slide around on the move, which also doubles as a wireless charger.
At first glance, the front seats look hard and sporty but actually they are comfortable enough on the back, they just have little-to-no thigh support on the sides.
I also struggled to quite find the ideal seating position because of the awkward and clunky manual adjustment on offer. While this isn’t the top-spec car, it’s not unreasonable to expect electrically adjustable seats for beyond $70K drive-away.
Overall, the quality of the interior is high, with nice materials used throughout. The Classic trim I had in this car, however, isn’t as exciting as others offered by Mini, and the dark hues can make it gloomy inside.
This test car features a cloth black/blue leather-look trim, but you can also have the same fabrics in a grey/blue colour that is lighter and might be nicer.
The carpet-like fabric used on the dash and doors looks great, and sets the Mini’s interior apart from other brands that just use plastic on plastic. It is scratchy, but running your nails over it can actually be quite therapeutic!
The blue struggles to be seen through it, though, whereas in the JCW the equivalent red pattern stands out.
It does get a heated steering wheel, heated front seats and a powered tailgate, but no electric seat adjustment – making that omission that much more odd. All of its rivals get electric seats with lumbar and memory at the same level.
It has enough space for two child seats on the outboard seats, and good leg room for an average-sized female adult in the second row even with the front passenger’s position set fairly far back.
The added benefit of the E for anyone sitting in the middle seat, over the JCW for example, is that the floor is flat because there’s no transmission tunnel so there’s more space for your feet.
Rear occupants also benefit from two roomy map pockets.
The back seats are a bit firm and slippery, without much support either for the back or the under-thigh.
Access from the boot to fit child seats is not great, and I found I had to remove the hard cardboard-style shelf to be able to adequately adjust the top tether straps. A retractable luggage cover would be better.
There are ISOFIX anchors on both outboard seats, though, which are easy to get to by lifting little plastic flaps.
The boot itself is an ample size for a small SUV at 460 litres with the rear seats up and 1450L with them down. It’s not as big as in the petrol-powered Countryman grades because it needs to accommodate the battery.
It does, however, have more space than the Volvo EX30 and Smart #1, which offer 318L and 323L with the second row upright, and 905L and 986L with the seats down, respectively.
The Kia, meanwhile, also offers 460L in the boot, extended to 1250L with the seats down.
All three rivals also feature frunks, ranging from 15 to 25L, but the Mini doesn’t.
In the Mini’s boot you can easily fit a pram, plus a couple of backpacks, or alternatively swap the pram out for around six regular-sized freezer bags for the weekly shop.
| 2025 Mini Countryman E Classic | |
| Seats | Five |
| Boot volume | 460L seats up 1450L seats folded |
| Length | 4445mm |
| Width | 1843mm |
| Height | 1635mm |
| Wheelbase | 2692mm |
Does the Mini Countryman have Apple CarPlay and Android Auto?
The Mini Countryman E has a unique 9.4-inch circular infotainment screen, through which you can also access wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, set in the middle of the dash.
It looks great, but also oddly feels like it has been tacked on rather than integrated into its surroundings, and in reality, its performance can be laggy.
It takes a good flick of the finger to swipe across, and there are a lot of functions to choose from, which is a little cluttered. Fortunately, there are tabs at the top such as ‘Infotainment’ and ‘Vehicle’ to make it easier to find what you need.
As noted in reviews of other variants, Apple CarPlay is displayed as a square, which is just so awkward to look at. Mini can fix this via on over-the-air update, but it hasn’t yet.
The Countryman E Classic gets a six-speaker sound system, which works just fine and offers acceptable sound quality, but it does need to be turned up quite loud to be heard over the road noise.
For reference, the Volvo EX30 has a nine-speaker audio system its mid-spec form, and the Smart #1 has a 13-speaker premium audio unit.
Where other brands zig, Mini zags, and foregoes a traditional driver’s instrument cluster, instead putting the information you’d normally find there either on the head-up display or within the infotainment screen.
The head-up offers minimal information in its default setting, just the power and battery use displayed as bars along with the speedometer.
In the infotainment screen, there are eight drive modes or ‘Experiences’ in this case.
Go Kart mode shows the rev counter, as well as how much power and torque you are using in real time, while Green displays the bonus driving range you get by stepping into a more efficient mode.
Mostly the other experiences are just there for personalisation, offering different visuals and sounds to suit individual tastes.
My favourite was Timeless, which best replicates old-school cluster gauges. The least relevant is Trail mode, which shows you a compass, as well as things like the degree of incline you’re on, which seems a little pointless for a FWD city car that hasn’t got the chops to go off-road.
The heating and ventilation controls are also contained with the infotainment system, but their position and ease of access make sense, even if I do prefer that there were physical buttons.
Perhaps my biggest annoyance was that the infotainment, including heating controls and head-up display, reset every time I started the car.
This meant each time I had to adjust the head-up back to the ideal height, turn the temperature back up from its default of 22 degrees, retune to my favourite radio station and re-establish the connection to Apple CarPlay.
Possibly this was because I was a guest and not using my own Mini Connected profile, but it seems unnecessary regardless. Weirdly though the heated steering wheel function stayed on by default.
It also has access to Mini Connected services, which provides features such as automatic emergency assistance, route planning, remote door locking/unlocking, climate control and EV-related information like how much battery you have left via the app.
Is the Mini Countryman a safe car?
All versions of the Mini Countryman received a five-star ANCAP rating in 2024.
Its rivals also boast five-star results too, Volvo’s from 2024 as well, while the Smart #1 was given the rating in 2022 and the Kia EV3 in 2025.
Scores of 83, 81 and 84 per cent were awarded for adult occupant protection, vulnerable road user protection and safety assist technology, respectively.
| 2025 Mini Countryman | |
| ANCAP rating | Five stars (tested 2024) |
| Safety report | Link to ANCAP report |
What safety technology does the Mini Countryman have?
The Countryman E Classic has an extensive list of safety equipment, as detailed in the table below.
It also includes as standard adaptive cruise control, lane-centring assist, speed-limiter, and parking assist with a 360-degree camera, the latter of which offers a nice, clean and crisp visual of the scene around you.
In their lowest settings I barely noticed the driver assistance technology at all. In fact, there were times I tried to nudge towards the outside of a lane to trigger it and nothing happened, so if you want to return to a less intrusive time of driving, you can.
Turning all the settings up to the max, there was still nothing chiming or bonging every second, which is refreshing, but there were some points where the technology didn’t quite work as it should.
In adaptive cruise control, for example, the Mini correctly judged the distance that needed to be maintained between itself and other cars generally well.
But if another car merged in front, it would often not slow down as quickly as you’d expect – not leaving much room between vehicles – and also then conversely would not speed back up again when there was ample space to do so.
| At a glance | 2025 Mini Countryman E Classic | |
| Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) | Yes | Includes cyclist and pedestrian detection |
| Adaptive Cruise Control | Yes | With stop-and-go |
| Blind Spot Alert | Yes | Includes lane-change warning and exit assist |
| Rear Cross-Traffic Alert | Yes | Alert and assist functions |
| Lane Assistance | Yes | Lane-departure warning, lane-keep assist, lane-centring assist |
| Road Sign Recognition | Yes | Includes speed limit assist |
| Driver Attention Warning | Yes | Driving behaviour-based |
| Cameras & Sensors | Yes | Front and rear sensors, surround-view monitor |
How much does the Mini Countryman cost to service?
The Mini Countryman E comes with a five-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty, with an eight-year/100,000km warranty for the battery.
Rather than insisting on maintenance being carried out at set intervals, Mini has condition-based servicing for the Countryman in line with requirements for its other models.
Over the course of six years, however, according to Mini, the Countryman E would cost around $2225 to service.
In comparison, Volvo offers a five-year/160,000km warranty on the EX30, with servicing free for the first five years or 150,000km, whichever comes first, and Smart has a five-year/150,000km warranty for the #1, with servicing set at every 12 months/20,000km.
Meanwhile, Kia offers a seven-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty for the EV3, with servicing needed every 12 months/15,000km.
The Mini Countryman E is quoted to cost $2350.89 for comprehensive insurance, on a comparative quote for a 35-year-old male living in Chatswood, NSW. Insurance estimates may vary based on your location, driving history, and personal circumstances.
| At a glance | 2025 Mini Countryman E Classic |
| Warranty | Five years, unlimited km |
| Battery warranty | Eight-year/100,000km |
| Service intervals | Conditional-based servicing |
| Servicing costs | $2225 (6 years) |
What is the range of a Mini Countryman?
The Mini Countryman E is claimed to have a driving range on paper of 462km, with a rated energy consumption figure of 17.2kWh per 100 kilometres.
The SE variant uses the same 64.6kWh battery, but has a reduced driving range of 433km because it gains a second motor and all-wheel-drive.
On test, I found I was able to beat the claimed consumption, bringing the figure down to 16.8kWh/100km, through a mix of town and freeway driving. The highest number I used was 19.8kWh/100km driving through rural areas with less traffic and twistier roads.
However, when I charged at work using our 11kW charger, leaving it plugged in for around four hours with around 130km of driving range left, I returned to find it claiming a 100 per cent topped-up battery gave me 407km.
On paper, the Volvo EX30 claims to use 17.5kWh/100km, and have a driving range of 462km, while the Smart #1 is purported to use 16.8kWh/100km and provide 400km of driving.
The Kia EV3, on the other hand, is claimed to use 16.4kWh and offer 563km of driving range for the mid and top Earth and GT-Line grades. Having recently tested the latter myself, I found it used 15.2kWh/100km.
While turning up the Kia’s heating seriously affected the driving range on my test, I did not find the same impact in the Mini – or at least the infotainment wasn’t displaying the information in real time so I wasn’t as anxious about it.
| Fuel efficiency | 2025 Mini Countryman E Classic |
| Energy cons. (claimed) | 17.2kWh/100km |
| Energy cons. (on test) | 16.8kWh/100km |
| Battery size | 64.6kWh |
| Driving range claim (WLTP) | 462km |
| Charge time (11kW) | 6h 15min |
| Charge time (350kW max rate) | 29min (claimed 10–80%) |
What is the Mini Countryman like to drive?
The Mini Countryman E is powered by a single electric motor producing 150kW/250Nm, coupled with a 64.6kWh (net) battery, driving just the front wheels.
The higher-grade Countryman SE has the same battery, but adds a second electric motor on the rear axle for all-wheel drive, boosts outputs up to 230kW/494Nm.
Similarly, the Volvo and Smart both offer more power and torque from their RWD powertrains, both providing outputs of 200kW and 343Nm.
The FWD Kia is just as powerful with 150kW, but has more torque with 283Nm.
While less powerful, the FWD Countryman E doesn’t leave you wanting for power. It still offers plenty of poke, and is quick even without putting it into Go Kart mode. Said mode sharpens the throttle response and increases the steering weight to make for a more sporty handling experience.
The ride is good, too, for the most part. On uneven patches of road it absorbs ripples and even potholes without too much clatter.
However, this Countryman rides on 225/55 R18s wrapped in Hankook Ventus S1 Evo3 rubber, which are EV tyres, but are more performance-focused, meaning the ride isn’t as smooth as it could be.
Grip is good, even in tight corners, and the road noise is pretty well muted unless the bitumen is particularly rough, though wind noise in the cabin can be invasive travelling at higher speeds on the freeway.
The steering is well-weighted and responsive, allowing the driver to turn sharply into corners, with no apparent dead spots. The steering wheel itself, however, feels very chunky and is awkward to grip
One thing that works really well in the Countryman E is the adaptive regenerative braking.
While most EVs offer low, medium or high regen settings, the Mini has an extra ‘adaptive’ option that adjusts the amount of energy fed back into the battery by braking based on things like data from the navigation system, camera input and ADAS sensor readings.
I often end up in medium regen modes in EVs because I find low regen doesn’t do enough and high regen is too forceful. This adaptive style was great because it intuitively seemed to know when I needed to brake, sometimes before I would have myself. At times, the regen could be a little hard, but it was a really good compromise.
On the flip side, one feature I could live without is the robotic EV sound that comes with acceleration or deceleration.
I appreciate there has to be some kind of noise in EVs so people can hear them coming, it was just so loud and fake it would drive me mad in the long term. Luckily it goes away once you hit around 40km/h.
The noise in Go Kart mode is even worse, because it tries to pop and crackle in the same manner as it would in the petrol-powered JCW, but does so in a very artificial way.
| Key details | 2025 Mini Countryman E Classic |
| Engine | Single electric motor |
| Power | 150kW |
| Torque | 250Nm |
| Drive type | Front-wheel drive |
| Transmission | Single-speed |
| Power-to-weight ratio | 80.4kW/t |
| Weight (kerb) | 1865kg |
| Spare tyre type | Tyre repair kit |
| Payload | 570kg |
| Tow rating | 750kg braked 750kg unbraked |
| Turning circle | 11.8m |
Can a Mini Countryman tow?
The Mini Countryman can tow, but its capacities are quite low, which isn’t a surprise for a small electric SUV.
It has a braked towing capacity of 750kg, an unbraked capacity of 750kg, and a payload rating of 570kg.
Should I buy a Mini Countryman?
As an electric family runaround if you live in a capital city, particularly in the inner suburbs, the Countryman E could do the job nicely.
It has good amounts of space for a small SUV. Though it doesn’t have as much room as its petrol counterparts, it has more than most of its closest rivals.
Where the E Classic in particular lets itself down is that its specification list is wanting.
No electrically adjustable seats for the money is a miss, as well as the six-speaker audio, leaving it out of pace with the offerings from its competitors.
For similar or less money you can get more equipment from its rivals, more power and torque, more driving range in most cases, and by spending just a few more thousand on the EX30 you can get AWD.
The Kia, Volvo and Smart all have sharper, more modern kerbside appeal, but this is an EV that feels a bit more familiar to what everyone has already come to know and love from a brand like Mini, and therefore might be an easier transition from ICE to electric.
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