August 22, 2024 – 3 years, almost to the day, since I received the fateful notice for my Bolt, I just learned about a battery recall for my Mini. I have not yet been notified by Mini; a news article about the recall came up on my feed, so I looked up my VIN and, sure enough, my 2023 Mini Cooper SE is affected.

I have maybe seen one report of an SE catching fire, and judging by the wording of the recall it seems like the issue is maybe not as extreme as the Bolt’s. However, don’t think me naive. Now that a recall is out there I would not be surprised to start seeing more reports of fires. And as far as the proposed fix: the Bolt recall saga shows that a quick software fix is not always the end of the story. Regardless of its effectiveness, it’s an interesting solution: to drain the battery if a fault is detected. I wonder how they can automatically dump charge like that. I may sound ignorant here, but where does it go?

So anyway, we’ll see how this progresses. I don’t feel as jaded about the Mini as I did my Bolt, so I’m not having as strong a reaction to this news. But they have not yet imposed onerous guidelines to follow, so that may change as the recall develops. I would not be opposed to a buyback if it came to that, but I feel that is unlikely for multiple reasons. I will update this post as things develop.

October 21, 2024 – I finally received official notice of this recall from Mini. It was mailed to me. The mailed notice said the remedy is available, which was not clear from the online recall information. I will contact a dealer and update with how the software installation goes.

November 1, 2024 – I got the recall repair done today. It was annoying to schedule, but it was done in a couple of hours. My hotkeys and a few other settings were wiped but otherwise I haven’t noticed any changes. I didn’t receive any more detail than what was in the original recall notice. So now I’m going to assume it is fixed and wait and see if anything new develops.