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Driving Experience and Competition

The great news is that the MG4 is a car with excellent road manners. It’s reasonably quick for an EV with very smooth acceleration and stable road manners. There’s the characteristic, slightly choppy suspension damping that’s quite typical with the heavier weight of electric vehicles, but the car does track accurately and confidently. 

Just how heavy is the MG4? It tips the scales at just a little under 1,700kg, which is quite normal for an EV of this size, though is around 200kg heavier than a comparably sized petrol-engined car. Much of this extra mass is in the battery pack, which is mounted in the centre of the chassis underneath the seats. This actually makes for a very stable car, which the MG4 puts to good use with a properly calibrated suspension setup. 

The extra weight of an EV means that you can’t expect the car to fling itself through corners and stop as quickly as a lighter ICE (internal combustion engined) car, however, it is very planted and exhibits good body control that some of the competition lack. We would hesitate to call it a sporty car but there are hints of it in the way the car handles.

While power economy is officially rated as 16.0kWh/100km, actual figures in practice actually swung very far under it. Over multiple days of use and recharges (because we covered an incredible amount of mileage in the car) the MG4 recorded an average power use of 15.0kWh/100km.

If you’re just droning on the highway for your daily commute, an average of 13.5kWh/100km is totally achievable with very little effort, while crawling along all day in start-stop traffic will result in a power use closer to 17.0kWh/100km. 

The car is most efficient around 80km/h to 90km/h. It will comfortably cruise at much higher speeds, though the trade-off is that power economy will drop off quite a bit, and this is a common trait with EVs. Every electric vehicle from the big BMW i7 to the small Peugeot e-2008 has an economy sweet spot, usually somewhere above 80km/h. Either way, the end result from the MG4 EV is that you can typically expect more than 400km per battery charge, and a range 450km is definitely within reach, without much difficulty.

You can now buy a made in Singapore Hyundai EV

The aerodynamics of the car are also well-sorted, and this was evidenced by the absence of wind noise even when a rear window was accidentally left open a tiny bit. In most other cars this would have resulted in wind buffeting noises yet there was none of that in the MG4.

The rear spoilers also deflect air away from the rear window effectively, which results in better overall power efficiency and reduced wind noise. In almost all hatchback shaped cars the rear window requires a wiper to clean off the dust and rain spray thrown up in the car’s wake. The MG4 does not have one because despite driving along through three days of near-continuous rainfall the rear window never got dirty from dust and rain spray, evidence that the airflow was being effectively channelled past the car.

The MG4 drew lessons from this other MG EV, which impressed us quite a bit too

While the car is fully equipped with an active safety suite of features including adaptive cruise control, the tracking system in the demonstration car is an early sample and was not fully configured for use on local roads yet, so we’ll hold comments on the tracking accuracy of the adaptive cruise control for now. MG also addressed the fact that over-the-air updates will eventually be made available for the MG4, similar to how BMW owners can get software updates for their cars directly via the internet.

The MG4’s power output places it squarely in the Category B COE segment, which at current COE prices puts its retail price at around S$180k inclusive of COE. It’s not far off the brand’s own MG ZS EV, which has also just been released in facelifted form in Singapore. The MG4 is the more forward-looking car between the two, and as with all car purchases a lot of buyer subjectivity comes into play as well.

The MG4 will also face competition from a collection of EVs that have just been launched at the Singapore Motorshow 2023, including the Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia Niro EV, and Toyota BZ4X. The possibility of a lower powered, Category A COE MG4 EV could also happen and while that will result in a slower car the resulting lower price could see more buyer interest.

They don’t all fit within the same sized box but it just goes to show that 2023 is looking to be a big breakout year for mainstream EVs in Singapore. Whether or not buyers will bite, remains to be seen. 

MG4 EV

*According to battery capacity and LTA homologated efficiency figures

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