2021 MG ZS EV: This is the cheapest electric SUV on the market

CarExpert

What is the most affordable electric SUV on the market? The 2021 MG ZS EV is a Chinese-built SUV that aims to dominate on price. With around 300km of driving range, it could be a good option for those after a cheap electric vehicle. Paul Maric reviews the MG ZS EV by SAIC Motor to see if it's worth spending your money on.  Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE  Skip Ahead: Intro: 00:00 Exterior 00:46 EV Specs 02:57 Interior 04:03 Infotainment 05:45 Safety Tech 07:54 Practicality 08:15 On the road 12:11 Verdict 18:19  We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.  Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.  Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1  You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.  Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!  Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!  CarExpert: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarExpertAus Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au  Paul Maric: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaric Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric  #mg #review #ev #electric #mgzs

Transcript

00:00 G'day, I'm Paul.

00:01 So as EVs become more popular,

00:03 more brands are trying to muscle in on the EV space,

00:07 and that's where MG comes in.

00:09 The Chinese brand has brought out its cheapest EV.

00:12 Well, it's actually the cheapest EV in Australia.

00:15 This is the MG ZS EV.

00:17 It's priced at just under $41,000.

00:20 It competes with things like the Nissan Leaf,

00:22 the Hyundai IONIQ EV,

00:24 and it kind of competes with the Hyundai Kona

00:26 in terms of the size and what they're trying to do with it.

00:29 Today, we're going to do a detailed review of this car.

00:32 If you do want to skip ahead to other parts of this review,

00:34 you can use the time codes up on the screen there,

00:35 or if you're on YouTube,

00:36 just scroll down and use the chapters below.

00:38 And if you haven't done so already,

00:40 make sure you hit subscribe and press the bell icon

00:42 so you can find out every single time we drive a new EV.

00:45 Now, in terms of design,

00:47 the ZS has been out for a fair while now.

00:50 This is a fresh EV to Australia,

00:52 but it has been available as an EV overseas

00:54 for a little while.

00:55 They've kind of retrofitted,

00:56 and I'll run through the EV specs shortly

00:58 and show you under the bonnet

00:59 so you can see exactly what I mean.

01:00 It looks like they've taken the engine out

01:01 and just put EV stuff in.

01:03 But just on the design front,

01:04 I don't think it's an offensive looking car.

01:06 You see a lot of these out on the road in Australia,

01:09 and I don't know,

01:09 they're pretty pleasant to look at, I reckon.

01:11 So you have chrome highlights down the front here,

01:14 this 3D etched grill,

01:16 and you'll be able to tell it's the EV version

01:18 because of this blanked out plate.

01:19 Then you've got other design highlights

01:21 like these offset colors.

01:22 You've got some piano black down there,

01:24 and then this silver garnish,

01:25 and then like a matte finish down the bottom,

01:28 along with some cooling down there,

01:29 plus a radar sensor for the cruise control,

01:32 and it assists with some of the safety systems.

01:34 In terms of headlights,

01:35 you have LED daytime running lights,

01:37 but unfortunately halogen main beam.

01:40 It's not a very nice headlight,

01:41 and it doesn't really work that well at nighttime.

01:43 If you want to see a comparison we did

01:44 between halogen, LED, and laser headlights,

01:47 click up here to watch exactly what I mean.

01:50 We'll jump around to the side.

01:51 You have 17 inch alloy wheels

01:54 with this sort of aero design.

01:56 So you can signify that it has EV intentions,

02:00 and it's a 50 profile tire,

02:02 so not entirely low profile.

02:04 I'll be really interested to see how this drives

02:05 because today we're gonna do some country driving,

02:07 and I wanna know whether it has been tuned

02:10 for Australian roads.

02:11 A little bit of plastic cladding there,

02:13 even though the EV is front wheel drive

02:14 and isn't for off-road.

02:16 I kind of add that stuff to SUVs,

02:18 so it looks like you can go four-wheel driving,

02:20 but you won't.

02:21 Down the side of the car,

02:22 you've got the indicator built into there.

02:24 Now this is interesting.

02:25 You'll see this when we jump into the car,

02:26 but this roof, the glass roof,

02:28 stretches almost the entire top section of the car.

02:32 So when you're in there,

02:33 you kind of sit back and you can see out of that.

02:36 Roof rails over here.

02:37 Now come around to the back of the car.

02:39 So you can tell it's the EV version

02:41 because you've got EV there,

02:42 and then a ZS badge as well.

02:44 The MG badge doubles as a boot opener.

02:47 You've got some highlights down here,

02:49 and obviously no exhaust pipe as well.

02:51 So let me know in the comments section below,

02:52 what do you think about the design?

02:54 Do you think they've done a good job here?

02:55 Would you buy one?

02:56 Let me know your thoughts.

02:57 Before we go inside,

02:58 I wanted to run you through the EV specifications quickly.

03:00 We'll start under the bonnet here.

03:02 You can see all they've done

03:03 is taken an internal combustion engine out

03:06 and then put all of the EV components in.

03:09 So this is an easy way of doing it

03:11 if you don't have a bespoke platform for your EV.

03:14 And I think this is what they wanted to do

03:16 to showcase what they have learnt in the EV space

03:19 before they bring out a dedicated EV.

03:21 So you can see here that there's no storage space.

03:23 Even though you could probably make this a storage space,

03:27 you obviously can't put anything there.

03:29 Down here is where you actually charge the car.

03:32 So you push this and then it pops open like that.

03:34 It then reveals a Type 2 plug,

03:37 including a CCS combo port.

03:40 Now that means you can have up to 6.6 kilowatts

03:43 of AC charging,

03:44 or up to 76 kilowatts of DC charging

03:48 using a CCS Type 2 plug.

03:51 That means you'll be able to do fast charging,

03:53 and it has a 44.5 kilowatt hour battery.

03:56 So if you do fast charge it,

03:57 that's an 80% charge in a matter of 30 or 40 minutes,

04:00 which is not too bad for this type of vehicle.

04:03 Okay, we are inside the MG ZS EV.

04:06 Let's start with the key.

04:07 So what it looks like, you have lock, boot, unlock,

04:10 little bit of garnish in between.

04:12 And then on the back,

04:13 you have the MG logo with red highlights around the side,

04:16 and then this sort of brushed chrome type look around there.

04:20 It's a proximity sensing key.

04:21 So you just leave that in your pocket,

04:22 grab the door handle to unlock the car.

04:24 And then once you're inside, you have a push button start.

04:27 Okay, so let's talk about styling.

04:30 Look, I think it looks good.

04:32 They've gone to a lot of effort here along the top,

04:34 for example, with that stitching

04:36 to make this look a little more premium.

04:39 This stuff's a little bit scratchy around here,

04:41 but I do like the look of this.

04:43 It's like a metallic gear selector.

04:45 It's got this LED along the top there.

04:47 And while we're here,

04:48 Formula One fans will like the MG ZS EV

04:51 because it has a curves button.

04:54 So the kinetic energy recovery system,

04:56 which is technically what it is.

04:57 It's just adjustment for the level of regenerative braking.

05:02 I like the way that they've broken up the colors as well.

05:05 Often it's just black and drab,

05:06 but there's nice silver highlights here

05:08 that sort of take your attention away

05:10 from all the black stuff in the piano black,

05:13 which I'm not a massive fan of, as you know.

05:16 Now, what about touch points?

05:17 So that's all nice and soft.

05:20 And so is the door there.

05:22 So while you're driving, that's all going to feel good.

05:24 How soft is it?

05:25 Well, we've got our durometer to test that out.

05:27 And we've tested all the main surfaces in this car.

05:30 You can see how this compares to other cars

05:31 that we've tested using the link in the description below.

05:35 Now, what about build quality?

05:37 Well, it gets a little bit wonky there,

05:39 but the rest of that feels pretty good.

05:41 So I'll be interested to see what these look like

05:43 in five or 10 years time.

05:45 Okay, let's talk infotainment.

05:47 So this is an eight inch infotainment screen,

05:50 and it's pretty basic.

05:52 And when I say basic,

05:53 I mean a little bit frustrating to use.

05:55 Thankfully though, it has a stack of smartphone mirroring.

05:58 So I'll run through that in a second,

05:59 but I'll give you a brief overview here.

06:00 So you have three main pillars to the infotainment system,

06:03 radio on the left, navigation in the center,

06:06 and then smartphone mirroring.

06:07 Then down the bottom,

06:08 you have shortcuts to other parts of the infotainment screen.

06:12 And then you also have shortcuts down here as well

06:15 to go to different sources, to fast forward,

06:17 or to go back to the home screen.

06:19 Start with radio.

06:20 So you have AM, FM, no DAB plus digital radio,

06:25 and that's all made it to a six speaker sound system.

06:28 If we jump over to navigation,

06:30 you can see everything takes a little while to happen here.

06:34 Still waiting.

06:38 Still waiting.

06:42 Okay, except, yeah, you can see it's,

06:46 it looks like a third party infotainment system.

06:49 It's okay.

06:50 It's not terrible, but it's not amazing either.

06:53 Thankfully though, you do have smartphone mirroring.

06:55 So it comes with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.

06:57 It's all wired.

06:58 So you need a cable to connect into that system.

07:01 I'll show you what Apple CarPlay looks like first.

07:04 So full screen integration,

07:05 works nice and quickly,

07:08 and then it mates to voice recognition.

07:10 So when you press that,

07:11 you're able to send commands through to your phone.

07:14 As far as I can tell,

07:15 this button does nothing if you don't have a smartphone

07:17 connected to the car.

07:19 Let's have a look at Android Auto.

07:21 Okay, so we actually won't show you Android Auto

07:24 because, have a look at what happens.

07:26 So you plug the phone up.

07:27 This is normally where Android Auto comes up,

07:29 saying that it's ready to start,

07:31 except all it says here is check your charger connection.

07:33 So we've got two other cars here at the moment

07:35 that have Android Auto,

07:36 and we have two USB-C cables.

07:40 Android Auto works fine on the other two cars

07:42 using our Samsung,

07:43 and so do the other two cables.

07:45 So there's something wrong with this system here

07:47 that's just not accepting Android Auto

07:49 on our S20 Plus Samsung.

07:51 So, yep, unfortunately, can't show you that.

07:54 Let's move on to safety.

07:55 So you have autonomous emergency braking,

07:57 radar cruise control,

07:59 a lane keeping assistant,

08:00 and a lane departure warning.

08:02 You have blind spot monitoring,

08:04 rear cross traffic alert.

08:05 You also have a reverse view camera

08:06 with rear parking sensors.

08:08 Let's have a look at what the quality of that's like.

08:10 That's not too bad.

08:11 So you've got the guidelines there,

08:12 and the actual picture quality is pretty decent as well.

08:15 Okay, let's talk about practicality,

08:18 and we'll start with connectivity.

08:19 Down at the bottom here, you have two USB ports,

08:21 one for smartphone mirroring,

08:23 and one for charging and also file transfer.

08:25 You also have a 12 volt outlet there as well.

08:28 Now, where are you gonna put your phone?

08:30 So you can place it down here.

08:32 There's no wireless phone charging,

08:33 but it is a gripped pad.

08:35 You can also place your phone in the cup holders

08:38 as well if you want.

08:39 Speaking of cup holders, coffee.

08:41 Where's it gonna sit?

08:42 So it sits easily in there.

08:44 The back one is a little deeper,

08:45 which means the lid could come loose.

08:47 In terms of our bottle,

08:50 sits up the front, but it moves around a fair bit.

08:52 There's no teeth there to hold it in.

08:54 And then you also have bottle storage inside the door.

08:57 So the console here, pretty decent sized.

09:00 See if it fits our bottle, almost.

09:02 And then a glove box as well,

09:04 reasonably sized to plenty of room for bottle storage.

09:07 You've got storage down here

09:09 where you can put bits and pieces.

09:10 And then finally you have a sunglasses holder up the top.

09:14 Okay, let's move on to comfort features.

09:16 So air conditioning.

09:17 Now I'm gonna spend a second on this

09:18 because I've grown to really dislike this system.

09:22 So it's not automatic climate control.

09:24 It's not like we set a temperature,

09:26 hit the auto button and it manages the rest.

09:28 It's all entirely manual,

09:29 but the problem is that it really doesn't differentiate

09:32 between cold and hot.

09:34 Like there's no middle ground.

09:35 So if you set the temperature down to cold

09:37 and have the AC running,

09:39 you literally get like frost building up

09:41 on the windscreen up there

09:42 if you have it on the windscreen setting.

09:43 And then if you go towards hot,

09:45 it sort of gets about halfway.

09:46 And then instead of just blowing out warmer air,

09:50 it just blows out hot air

09:51 and ignores the air conditioner setting.

09:53 It's just a really strange setup

09:55 and it's hard to find just the right temperature

09:58 for this system.

09:59 So I don't know why they didn't spend more time

10:01 engineering that because I think it is

10:03 a major flaw of the car.

10:05 But outside of that,

10:06 you do get heated seats for the driver and front passenger.

10:09 The driver also then gets electric seat adjustment.

10:12 And then the seats themselves

10:13 are actually quite comfortable.

10:15 They hug you in nicely and they support you well.

10:17 The steering wheel sits nicely in the hand,

10:19 but it has no reach adjustment.

10:21 So it kind of, you know, I don't know.

10:23 I can't find a comfortable driving position

10:25 'cause you feel like you're ages away

10:27 from the steering wheel

10:28 unless you wanna be sitting on top of it.

10:30 But outside of that,

10:31 all of these controls are fairly easy to reach.

10:34 Righto, back seat, what's it like back here?

10:37 We'll start with room.

10:38 Not a huge amount of knee room.

10:40 I'm kind of wedged up against that seat.

10:41 Keep in mind though,

10:42 I do normally have my seat quite far back.

10:44 Toe room is pretty reasonable.

10:47 Headroom is okay.

10:48 Keep in mind though,

10:49 you have this giant panoramic roof here

10:51 that eats away slightly into the headroom.

10:53 But I think this is a really cool addition.

10:54 It just brings a lot of light into the cabin

10:57 and you kind of don't expect it on a car like this.

10:59 So it's really nice to see.

11:00 Map pockets in both of the back seats.

11:03 You have a USB charging point just here.

11:05 No air vents back here, unfortunately.

11:07 No center armrest,

11:08 but you can put your bottle inside the door if you need to.

11:11 And in terms of child seats,

11:13 you have ISOFIX points on the two outboard seats.

11:16 Okay, let's talk cargo space.

11:17 So like I mentioned earlier,

11:18 push of that and a pull opens the boot.

11:21 You have a little over 350 liters of cargo space here

11:24 before you drop the second row.

11:26 And this is a dual tiered floor,

11:28 which means it can sit up here

11:30 and you can hide valuables under there,

11:32 or alternatively it can sit down there.

11:35 And then under there you have a charging cable

11:36 plus a tire repair kit because there is no spare tire.

11:39 Nets off to the side.

11:41 See how it fits our bags.

11:44 I think it kind of fits that way,

11:48 or you can turn them around

11:50 and that would easily fit as well.

11:52 What I'll do now is drop the second row.

11:54 Get rid of this cargo blind.

11:56 Fairly easy process.

11:58 Once that is gone, we can drop our second row

12:01 just like this to reveal a little over

12:04 1100 liters of cargo space.

12:06 Keep in mind it's not a flat load floor,

12:07 but it can be fairly flat

12:09 if you bring this up another notch.

12:11 We've hit the road in the MG ZS EV.

12:15 Nice and quiet in here.

12:17 The electric drive trains in these modern cars,

12:20 they just create a nice and serene environment.

12:22 So this one here is a single electric motor

12:25 on the front axle, so it's front wheel drive.

12:26 It produces 105 kilowatts of power

12:29 and 353 Newton meters of torque.

12:33 So what does it feel like behind the wheel?

12:35 Well, it's really responsive.

12:36 If I come to a stop and we'll do a zero to 100 run

12:39 in just a second, but I just want to give you an idea

12:41 of how this feels.

12:43 Just give it a little poke, flatten the throttle.

12:46 Pins you back in the seat nicely

12:48 because it doesn't weigh all that much.

12:50 It's around 1600 kilos.

12:52 It's really nice and responsive

12:53 and it's always ready to go.

12:54 And that's the big inherent advantage

12:56 of an electric drive train.

12:58 You don't have gears and things like that to step through.

13:01 It's just punch the throttle

13:02 and it gives you that torque instantly.

13:04 It's like a tap, it's fantastic.

13:06 Now, MG says that it will use a combined

13:10 18.6 kilowatt hours per 100 kilometers.

13:13 Let's scroll through and see what we're sitting on.

13:17 Oh, there you go, 18.2 kilowatt hours per 100 K.

13:19 So we're pretty much bang on that official claim.

13:22 Let's talk driving range quickly.

13:23 So it's really confusing in EVs

13:25 because you have NEDC, EPA, WLTP.

13:30 We just have a litany of different driving ranges.

13:33 And in Australia, we use NEDC,

13:35 which is what the published figures are.

13:37 And NEDC for this car is 320 kilometers,

13:40 but your realistic driving range is around 260 kilometers.

13:45 So it all varies depending on temperature

13:47 and that kind of thing.

13:48 In fact, let us know in the comment section below,

13:49 do you want us to do a video explaining why EV range

13:53 differs so much depending on the time of year

13:55 and all that kind of thing?

13:57 Can you get your feedback on that?

13:58 Now let's talk about the drive mode.

13:59 So you have three to choose from

14:01 and you select them by flicking the mode switch.

14:03 You have normal, eco, which sort of just dulls everything,

14:08 and then sport.

14:09 Sport immediately sharpens up throttle response

14:12 and it just makes it a whole lot livelier

14:14 than it actually is.

14:15 It's actually pretty impressive.

14:17 Once you're in sport mode, it is highly responsive

14:20 and it's ready to rumble.

14:21 What you will notice though,

14:22 if you stand on the throttle from a standing start,

14:25 that they've given it just enough power and torque

14:28 that you'll get a hint of torque steer.

14:30 I think if it had any more,

14:31 it'd start behaving like a Hyundai Kona EV,

14:34 which sort of just feels like it's all over the place.

14:37 This is a whole lot more subdued.

14:38 Now, the one that has me laughing here,

14:40 I mentioned earlier, the curse mode.

14:42 So kind of like Formula One territory,

14:44 where you give that a flick

14:45 and you can change between three levels of regen.

14:49 That regen, of course, plums energy back

14:51 into the battery system for later use.

14:53 And you're kind of getting energy for free.

14:55 If you're travelling downhills,

14:56 it means you don't have to rely on the brake pedal.

14:58 But it's not like a Tesla or a Nissan LEAF

15:00 where you have the E-pedal and you can do one foot driving.

15:03 If I roll out of that and let it slow down,

15:05 I have it in its most intense regen setting.

15:08 We reach a lower speed

15:10 and then eventually it lets go of that regen mode

15:13 and then you need to take over with the brake pedal.

15:15 The relationship between regen and the brake pedal

15:18 is actually pretty good.

15:19 It's quite linear and very smooth.

15:21 It doesn't feel like it's interrupted.

15:23 And if you do need to get on the brakes,

15:25 it all feels okay behind the wheel.

15:27 You'll notice as well that the cluster

15:28 is a little different here too.

15:29 You've got a power meter

15:31 that has how much throttle you're applying.

15:33 So if I punch that, it'll go all the way around to 100.

15:36 And then if I release the throttle and go into regen,

15:38 it then tucks into that regen mode.

15:40 And then you've got your driving range

15:41 visible there on the screen.

15:43 Most random thing in the world though,

15:44 there's a gauge down here for the battery system

15:46 for the 12-volt battery.

15:48 Seems really random.

15:49 I know that it has a 12-volt battery on board,

15:50 but I don't really understand why we're seeing a gauge there

15:52 telling us what the voltage level is.

15:54 MG claims an official zero to 100 time of 8.2 seconds.

15:58 Let's see how it goes against our stopwatch.

16:00 Let's talk about ride.

16:12 This is the thing that I think surprised me the most

16:15 with the ZS EV.

16:16 I was expecting it to be not that great,

16:19 but it is coping really well.

16:20 In and around the city, it's really nice and soft and smooth.

16:23 Out here in the country where we're throwing corrugations,

16:27 big dips at highway speeds and that kind of thing,

16:29 it really soaks it up nicely.

16:31 It is a little on the softer side of comfortable,

16:33 so it will linger if you sort of hit a peak in the road.

16:36 But for the most part, it's actually really comfortable.

16:38 And it shows you that they have put a lot of effort

16:40 into tuning this with respect to Australian conditions.

16:43 Same can't quite be said for the noise.

16:45 While it is quiet while it's running because it's an EV,

16:48 there is a tonne of wind noise coming in

16:49 and a fair bit of tyre noise on coarse surfaces.

16:52 So I think this is more designed to be driven in and around the city.

16:55 And given that this platform is a carryover

16:57 from an internal combustion platform,

16:59 they probably haven't spent a great deal of time on insulation

17:02 and making it quiet while you are driving in these types of conditions.

17:06 Now, what about handling? We'll quickly touch on that.

17:08 So if I pop this into Sport mode,

17:12 the steering gets much heavier,

17:14 but the steering doesn't have a great deal of feel in it.

17:16 It's very artificial and it's...

17:20 You can kind of see that instead of actually putting feel into it,

17:23 they've just made it feel like it has feel.

17:25 And it doesn't really handle at all.

17:27 The problem with this drivetrain is

17:29 when you tip it into a corner and punch the throttle,

17:32 it's effectively the single spinner

17:34 because it doesn't have a limited slip differential

17:36 and you're getting that effect of the tyre losing traction.

17:40 Stability control kicks in and it kind of interrupts the whole process.

17:43 So it's not a sports car in that sense,

17:46 but, you know, I guess it's OK for what it is.

17:48 Turning circle is 11.2 metres.

17:51 It's about run of the mill for a front-wheel drive car.

17:54 Let's see if we can pop a U-turn here.

17:57 There you go. No dramas.

18:00 So it'll be good for some tight driving in and around the city.

18:03 Visibility is good.

18:05 You can see clearly down the front of the car there.

18:07 The wing mirror is more than big enough

18:09 with the blind spot monitor built in.

18:11 Out the back, the envelope there of that window is perfectly fine.

18:14 So in terms of being able to drive and park this in and around the city,

18:18 it's no dramas at all.

18:19 OK, the MG ZS EV. What do we think?

18:22 Well, I think it's actually incredibly good value for money

18:25 when you consider the range that you get

18:28 in comparison to the competitors in this segment.

18:31 It drives really nicely.

18:32 And as an EV, they've done a really good job with it.

18:35 This isn't a company with decades of, you know, experience in EVs.

18:39 They're not like a Tesla in this segment.

18:41 But they have put together a really reasonable car.

18:43 But I am disappointed with that infotainment system.

18:46 It is pretty frustrating.

18:47 And the climate controls,

18:48 you just could not get the right temperature,

18:50 and that ended up doing my head in.

18:52 So if you put those things to the side, though,

18:54 it is good value for money if you are looking for a cheap EV.

18:58 So let me know in the comments section below,

19:01 would you buy one of these?

19:02 Are you in the market for an EV?

19:04 Or do you think that you need more range to suit your EV buying needs?

19:08 Let me know in the comments section below.

19:10 If you did enjoy this video, make sure you share it,

19:12 and also hit the like button.

19:13 And if you haven't done so already,

19:15 I would love it if you could subscribe to our channel

19:17 and press the bell icon as well.

19:19 But until next time, drive safely, guys.

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