New Mini Aceman coming soon – price, specs and release info

This is the MINI Aceman, a little SUV-crossover that has the distinction of being the brand’s first electric-only model. Unlike the latest Mini Cooper, which is available with petrol as well as electric drivetrains, there’ll never be a petrol Aceman. There are still folk who believe Mini has no business making SUV-style cars like this, but brand purists will at least be assuaged by the fact that this is the smallest modern crossover that Mini has ever done.
Read on to find out everything we know so far about the Mini Aceman… • Built on the new Mini Cooper platform, it’s a little smaller than the the original Mini Countryman and even the three-door Paceman • It still seats five, though, and has a decent 300-litre boot space • Minimalistic interior features circular central touchscreen and impressive dashboard lighting • Two drivetrain choices: E, with 184 horsepower and a 194-mile range; and SE, with 218 horsepower and 252 miles • Mini says it "handles like a go-kart”. Obviously. It definitely doesn’t, but it’ll be more fun than the average small SUV • First cars on the road from October 2024, priced from £31,800

Design and models available

The Aceman is very much in keeping with the new Mini design philosophy. The company calls it “charismatic simplicity”, and while the interior is clean and quite simple, the exterior is less so. A basic two-box design has been furnished with strong shoulder lines (below the windows), all manner of panel creases, asymmetric wheel arches and the obligatory ‘rugged’ treatment courtesy of liberal lower-body plastic cladding.
We’ll explain the battery options and power below, but you get three trim levels: Classic, Exclusive and Sport. All get the central touchscreen (because the car would be basically useless without it) as well as a few things that you’d expect on an options list – especially a Mini options list. A heated steering wheel and a rear-view camera, for instance. Exclusive trim adds stuff like a head-up display, heated front seats and keyless entry. And Sport trim is, as you’d expect, more focussed on styling addenda – bigger wheels, body kit, that sort of thing. We had a poke around an Aceman at the Beijing Motor Show recently, and despite operating in the same class of cars as the Jeep Avenger and Volvo EX30, it looks surprisingly compact – flick through the images above to see how dinky it looks next to a new Countryman. Despite that, rear space is generous, with a pleasantly surprising amount of room for longer legs and bigger brainboxes.

The centrepiece, literally, is the 9.4-inch OLED circular display on the dashboard, tasked with handling virtually all the car’s functionality. That said, there’s a panel underneath it with a volume dial, a driving mode toggle and – unusually – a toggle for selecting drive and reverse. That’s liberated space between the front seats for storage – one of the “creative uses of interior space” that Mini refers to for the Aceman. The boot is about what you’d expect from a small family hatchback – 300 litres, rising to about 1000 with the rear seats folded. A panoramic glass ‘sky roof’ is optional, and there’s ambient lighting all the way along the interior roof frame; Mini has gone all-out to make this interior as dazzling as can be, as per.
Clearly, much thought has gone into making the touchscreen interface appealing and user-friendly to ‘the kids’. Mini has followed the trend of ditching a dead-on instrument cluster (albeit, a massive central speedo is a Mini trait, of course), and has moved everything to the middle screen. So, speed and battery status sit at the top of the circle, while the lower section of the screen gets various shortcut widgets. Thankfully, the climate control functions are always displayed, as is a shortcut ‘toolbelt’ that gives one-press access to things like your favourite radio station or your home address in the nav. …but if all that sounds like too much finger effort, you can control the whole thing with your voice. A couple of its more innovative features include AirConsole, which lets you play games when you’re parked up using your phone as a controller. It also has the ability to recognise when you’re entering a car park and automatically open the driver-side window. That’s easily a Mars Bar’s worth of energy saved over the course of three years' ownership. Treat yourself.

Mini has kept the battery options simple, offering an ‘E’ model with a 181-horsepower electric motor and a 42.5Wh battery, good for a claimed 194 miles of range. The ‘SE’ model gets a bigger battery and more power: 54kWh and 218 horsepower respectively. That one’s good for a 252-mile range. The quicker one has more torque (330Nm compared to 290Nm), which means it’s 0.8 seconds quicker to 62mph, doing it in 7.1 seconds.
The max charging speeds don’t generate any headlines – 75kW top speed for an E, and 95kW for an SE. That's way lower that what any given Tesla is capable of, say. But charging impresses where it matters. Every Aceman gets 11kW on-board charging, which means it’ll charge quickly at public or office-based fast stations.

You can order an Aceman now, but it won’t turn up until October 2024. It’s priced quite aggressively, in that an E model in Classic trim will set you back less than £32,000 - not bad at all for an EV, especially one with a Mini badge. You can easily nudge towards £40k, though. An SE car starts at £36,300, which means that in top spec and with a few customisation options, your little Mini SUV stops looking so cheap.

What other cars from Mini are due?

Mini is basically entering a new phase of life at the moment – the electric phase – with box-fresh versions of the hatchback, the Countryman and this all coming along at basically the same time. We’ll see John Cooper Works versions (fast versions, that is) of all of them in the near future, and there’ll be a five-door version of the hatchback soon too.

What other cars will this compete with?

The the Volvo EX30, Jeep Avenger, Mazda MX-30 and thel latest Mini Cooper make up the most obvious rivals for the Aceman, but we wouldn’t be surprised if Honda-e, MG4 and even Mini hatchback considerers took a sideways glance at the Aceman.