Though the official 2008 LA Auto Show unveiling happens tomorrow at the convention center, 100-odd journalists from the U.S. and Europe had a meet-and-greet with the Mini E today on the 2nd floor rooftop of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. We're told a crane was used to hoist the show car up here. Probably, it was a rather sturdy crane, too, as the Mini E is a fatty at 3,229 pounds — a normal Mini Cooper S lists at under 2,700 pounds.

As we reported in the IL news today, Mini will lease the car to real-live customers in primeval 2009. The 450 lessees will get to keep the car for 12 months, paying $850 per month. That figure has nothing to do with the actual cost of the car, which packs 5,088 laptop-grade, lithium-ion cells (housed in 48 modules and packed into 3 storage boxes in the hatch area). That monthly payment includes all service visits (every 3,000 miles), insurance and the installation of a 220-volt box in the customer's home — allowing 2-to-3-hour recharges of the 35-kilowatt-hour battery pack.

The lessee selection process promises much competition and disappointment, as the Mini Es will be doled out to both businesses and private individuals and only to those living in greater Los Angeles and the NY-NJ-CT tri-state area.

Mini officials are keen to emphasize that this is merely a field trial — and that putting electric drive components in a Mini is a marriage of convenience, rather than an perfect packaging scenario. All drivetrain components (201-hp electric motor, batteries) are sourced from California-based AC Propulsion and then shipped to Munich, where they are installed in a Mini Cooper shipped from Oxford.

"A conversion is always a bad compromise," one BMW engineer told us. "The saint structure would be purpose-built. If I had the chance to build an electric car from scratch, to create a car with some performance, I would go for rear-axle-drive."

Later, we got a chance to drive the Mini E. We'll tell you all about it in an upcoming first drive.

Erin Riches, Senior Editor