As far as I'm aware our Mini SE isn't approved for any sort of towing, and for stuff like caravans or horse trailers I would think the use case is well outside the design envelope of current EVs - although the capabilities of American stuff like Rivians and the Ford F150 Lightning might be different.

Driving EVs on the continent is no more of a problem than it is in the UK regarding accessibility of charge points and the need to put a bit more thought into route planning. Here's a ZAP Map article that gives a good impression of the realities of doing a long European trip.

https://www.zap-map.com/ev-driving-in-europe/

So if one needs a single vehicle that is both capable of towing heavy things and travelling for long distances without stopping to charge, I would say that EVs do not currently offer a good solution and one is better sticking with diesel. But that is not to say this will always be the case, neither is it typical of most people's vehicle usage nor of the likelihood of a family only owning a single vehicle that is required to do everything.

BEVs are not a complete answer to providing personal transportation with lower environmental impact, and I don't think anyone is claiming that they are. Our Mini SE is very cheap to run, and easily supports well over 90% of our transport needs. On the days when we need to fetch a tonne of logs in our trailer we use the Land Rover, and on the days when we want to do a long journey without having to plan for recharge breaks we use the Morgan.

In the 11 months we've owned it we've done about 5200 miles at an average 4.7 miles/KWh, of which I would guess about a third has been directly sourced from our solar panels at zero cost. So that's 5 thousand miles of zero tailpipe emissions put into the environment at a cost of about 1MWh, only about 600KWh of which we'd had to pay for. We're on a relatively expensive pure green tariff from Ecotricity, so in financial terms it's been about £350 or so. It was cheaper to buy than an equivalently specced Mini Cooper S, and the only servicing costs are brake fluid and cabin filter replacement every 2 years.


Tim H.
1986 4/4 VVTi Sport, 2002 LR Defender, 2022 Mini Cooper SE