Couple thoughts...
pretty fair and balanced review. One thing that caught my eye was that the mileage numbers for trips are similar to the US number, but diveded by about a factor of 4!
For the poor winter driving, this is because the MINI e used air cooled batteries. Simpler to install, but more coupled to environmental issues. The water cooled systems are hit nearly so hard by cold temps (they are kept warm whilel plugged into the charging system, so the capacity is maintained).
As for the lack of space, I think this was just lazyness on MINIs part. The company that did commercial MINI electric conversions kept the rear seat, and had similar range numbers.
Anyway, this echos the results that are coming up for pretty much all "all electric" vehicles: They have lots of pluses, and the biggest minun is the limited range, that means that they aren't a total replacent solution for the light vehicle fleet. But then, they were never meant to be.
The other "take away" is that for most, the range limitations were much less of a problem than people thought they would be before they took posession of the car.
Matt