‘A wonderful dollop of joy’: I took the new electric Bean Mini for a spin around London
Film and television have created icons of people, animals, places and even cars. Inspector Morse’s Jaguar Mk2, the DeLorean from Back to the Future and many more. One has hit loftier heights than many: the humble Mini.
Of course, The Italian Job did a good job with the innovative British car, but Mr Bean’s Mini is perhaps known farther and wider.
Painted in a glorious lime green and black, with a padlock on the door, Bean’s ride is a deeply ludicrous thing – especially with an armchair mounted on the roof, a mop to operate the pedals and string to twiddle the steering wheel. Naturally, such things wouldn’t pass muster in the real world as the police may take a dim view on driving your car from the outside around the sights of central London, but in the hands of a tweed-clad, grunting man and his teddy it made for good, clean and internationally recognisable fun.
Classic Minis, in 2024, aren’t the cleanest things to drive. Their tiny A-series engines produce plenty of fun, parpy noises, but in return you get precious little power and emissions that would wilt a forest. Unless they’re more than 40 years old and have historic status, they fall foul of London’s Ultra Low Emissions Zone (Ulez), which means that what was once a common sight on the capital’s streets and across the land is now a rare treat… unless you find one that’s been converted to run on electricity.
The UK is something of a world leader in the conversion of cars from an internal combustion engine (ICE) to an electric vehicle (EV). Small businesses are popping up all over the place to swap polluting powertrains for smooth, green electricity.
The range of cars you can have swapped is limitless. Oxfordshire’s Electrogenic will convert cars on a bespoke basis as well as having a menu to choose from, while Everrati offers complete vehicles from a line-up of its own choosing – anything from a Porsche 911 (which Porsche purists love) to a Series II Land Rover and anything in between. Other businesses offer kits for converted cars, which is where Fellten comes in.
The Bristol-based firm is a young business having fun. It’s primarily a battery supplier – it will create packs for various uses all over the world, but it also offers a Mini conversion kit. Chris Hazell, its founder and CEO, is, naturally, all about professionalism and making sure that his company grows, but he’s also (like most people into cars) no stranger to having fun. Recreating Mr Bean’s roof-driven Mini sounds like fun, doesn’t it?
The car itself was by all accounts a bit of a wreck when it rolled into Fellten’s workshop. If we’re honest, most Minis of a certain age are undergoing an oxidisation-led weight reduction programme, which is great for weight-saving but less so for essential things such as passenger safety. Driving with a breeze by your feet is fun for a while, but a chassis made of crumbly rust is less than ideal in a crash.
Hazell documented the Mini’s recommissioning on his YouTube channel, showing the world what goes into keeping a classic on the road. However, when it came to motive power, naturally he elected to install a Fellten kit to replace the old combustion engine. And, of course, an armchair on the roof.
The company’s kit comprises a Zonic motor kicking out 100hp and 129lb ft of torque, driven by a 19kWh battery. Drive carefully, says Fellten, and you’ll get 110 miles from a full charge. The controls are unchanged, although there’s a lever for the gear change (where you would usually find a manual gearbox), as well as new dials (a mix of digital and analogue) to display things such as speed, state of charge, drive and more.
The Bean Mini even has vehicle-to-load to power external appliances; a small coffee machine lives in the Mini’s notoriously tiny boot. A neat touch for a rather bizarre build.
Walking up to it, waves of delicious nostalgia wash over you. The true Bean enthusiast will spot the addition of a green vertical stripe on its number plate and wonder what it means, but it’s a wonderful dollop of joy in a world full of increasingly anonymous grey boxes. A classic Mini can’t help but raise a smile, but what would one with an armchair on the roof do? And what about if it was driven around one of the capital’s tourist hotspots? Even as the height of the summer season gently fades, Parliament Square is always awash with visitors. Whether they’re from the UK, or farther afield, few places will be a better test for the Bean Mini’s global appeal than outside the corridors of power.
After a brief sit on the roof pretending to be a grumbling buffoon (or, perhaps, less of one), jabbing a mop in the general direction of the pedals and “steering” with string to satisfy my inner child, I took the wheel to see what the public would make of it.
Slotting the car into drive, it rolled away smoothly, with just a hint of a whirr. With a chunky 100hp on tap, it’s a fair lick quicker than a petrol-powered Mini, although around Parliament Square at lunchtime anything above 5mph is a miracle.
From the moment I edged out into full view, eyes were on the car. It received more than a few nods from cabbies – the automotive equivalent of the Hollywood Handshake – and was even let out into traffic without issue (a rarity for London, even on a good day).
And then it began. As soon as one pedestrian saw the car, the “Oh my god…” wave lapped the square. People didn’t want a picture with Big Ben any more, they wanted a picture with the silly car passing Big Ben. Whether they had an iPhone, point and shoot, or pro-level DSLR, everyone wanted a slice of the little car. There wasn’t an inch of its journey that wasn’t recorded that day. It’s an odd looking thing, sure, so some attention is to be expected, but over and over I heard (thanks to the lack of clattery engine) people shout “Mr Bean!”
While not quite dressed for the job of being Bean, I certainly enjoyed his wheels. There are more than a few Mini conversions on the market. Some are fantastic, others need work. Fellten’s is, thankfully, in the former camp. Its 100hp Zonic motor is smooth and, in Sport mode, will get the car from 0-60mph in eight seconds (about on par with BMW’s latest petrol Mini Cooper), although it will take 11 seconds in the more economical City mode. The former setting provides a little more pep, but for heavy traffic and posing for tourists City is just fine.
For the conversion, Fellten will send you (or a mechanic) a preassembled subframe with batteries, motors, wiring and everything you need to make the swap. What you do with the old bits is down to you. This isn’t simply a “see what we can get away with” deal – Fellten is a BMW/Mini partner for classic EV conversions.
Weight and weight distribution are, says Fellten, on par with the original car, too, so you needn’t worry about hefty batteries taking away any of the Mini’s legendary nippiness, whether in town or the countryside.
It feels joyful to be in. Not just because it’s wearing a fancy dress that makes strangers happy, but because it’s still a classic Mini. Deft handling, chuckability, smart packaging and that classic look are all part of the deal, but it’s a little cleaner than it used to be.
Although fast charging isn’t an option, you can cover decent ground for a day, provided you stop for a leisurely lunch (given that its battery isn’t exactly massive). Or you can simply have a nip around town.
The Bean Mini is a neat thing. As a showcase for everything Fellten can do, it draws the eye, raises eyebrows – and a smile. Such a conversion will be a third, or even fourth car for people with the space to store and charge it, but if your choice to get around town on electric power is a modern EV supermini – with all the drabness that comes with such a thing – or a repurposed classic Mini… well, one is a lot more fun than the other. With or without a chair on the roof.