Here in the United States, the MINI Cooper comes with a 1.6-liter gasoline engine or the turbocharged 1.6-liter engine in the Cooper S and John Cooper Works versions. In markets outside the U.S., MINI offers a version with a tiny 1.4-liter gasoline engine as well as a version with a diesel engine.

All that is about to change with the introduction of the MINI E, E for electric. It's the first all-electric production car offered to the American buying public by a major manufacturer, beating the rest to the market.

However, it isn't going to be widely available to the public for some time yet. The fast-charging all-electric MINI E is initially only going to be built in a batch of 500 cars, 250 for greater Los Angeles, and 250 for greater New York, so that the company can do a proper job of charging equipment installation and keeping up good communications between the users and the company over time. All of the MINI E cars will be built in Munich, rather than the main plant in Oxford, Eng