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If this charging setup looks a little odd, that''s because it's a hybrid! 


Our long-term Mini E has a wall-charger at the office that juices up the batteries in a few hours, but when its out on the road we've been pretty much limited to a 110volt cord that takes, well, just a little south of forever to recharge a depleted pack.


Green Car Advisor Contributing Editor Scott Doggett's taken the Mini E from Edmunds' headquarters in Santa Monica down to the North San Diego County coastal town of Encinitas for a weekend adventure - he'll be blogging about that later.


But the trip is a cool 100 miles each way and at freeway speeds that pretty much exhausts the batteries 20 to 30 miles short of the destination.


So we borrowed an adaptive system from AC Propulsion, the San Dimas, Calif., company that builds and markets EV drive and control systems did the propulsion system for the Mini E.


It enables the driver to use one of the old Southern California Edison Co.-installed conductive  chargers that are still spotted all over the greater Los Angels and San Francisco Bay regions - left over from the 1998-2003 period in which a number of automakers were trying to keep California air quality regulators happy by testing small numbers of EVs in the state. (Next to it, on the left in the photo, is an inductive charger installed during the same period for GM's EV1 and Toyota's Rav4 EV.)


Scott stopped off in Santa Ana, Calif., about halfway between Santa Monica and Encinitas, to try the charger that is still guarding a lonely EV-only parking and charging spot at the Main Place Shopping Mall.


It still works (some of the old chargers don't) and by clicking the charger's unique pup-tent shaped head into the receptacle on the adapter box and then plugging the Mini E's optional bright orange 220-volt charging cord into the box and the car, he was able to bring a 45 percent battery back up to 100 percent in about two hours, versus the somewhere around 12 hours it would have taken with the 110-volt cord. 


"It's the way EV travel should be," said Tom Gage - AC's prexy and CEO - when he loaned us the cord and the adapter box.


More on the trip and the recharging adventures when Scott's back at this desk early in the week.

Tags: MINI, Plug-ins and Electric, EV Charging, EVs, Mini E Charging

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2009 Mini E: Charging Along was originally published by Green Car Advisor. Read the full story by clicking here.