2022 MG ZS EV ESSENCE | CAR REVIEW

by DriveLife

Since the Clean Car Programme was launched, the MG ZS EV seems to have popped up like a meerkat. With its distinctive grille, it’s obvious if one is driving towards you, and that happens often. For 2022, MG has refreshed their ZS EV with a slightly bigger battery (now 50.3 kWh), a new front design, NVH improvements and carryover pricing – so no increase in cost. After flying to Auckland, we grabbed a new ZS EV and did the 652 km drive home in it.

What’s In The 2022 MG ZS EV Range?

There are two models in the 2022 MG ZS EV range and both are eligible for the full $8,625 Clean Car Programme rebate. Without the rebate, the price of the Excite is $49,490 and the Essence is $53,490. MG has “driveaway” pricing of $49,990 for the Excite and $53,990 for the Essence, so this includes on-road costs. Both are identical in drivetrain and battery; you get a 130 kW electric motor that outputs 280 Nm of torque to drive the car. It’s front-wheel drive only.

For a full list of specs and options available for the 2022 MG ZS EV Essence, head on over to the MG Motors New Zealand website at mgmotor.co.nz.

First Impressions Of The 2022 MG ZS EV Essence

It was almost a key feature of the outgoing MG ZS EV that it had the same grille as the petrol model. At DriveLife, we’re quite keen on that idea. Why make an EV look totally different to the petrol model if you want buyers to accept it as the new norm? Anyway, the new ZS EV has done away with the grille, and instead has a flat plastic panel that’s peppered with indents. I’ve never been a fan of this idea – the Kona EV leaps to mind – but it actually suits the ZS EV quite well. So, I’ve eaten my words.

The headlights have gone LED, as have the tail-lights, and both ends of the car look fresher and more modern, and they look good. This could also be down to the excellent Brighton Blue paint on our test car. It suited the shape of the car and it’s the colour I’d go for. Then again, while charging up in Waiouru I had someone asking me about the MG and when I asked her about the colour, she just about vomited. It’s a personal choice. Likely she’s one of those buyers that wants a boring grey car.

What’s The Interior Like In The 2022 MG ZS EV Essence?

While there haven’t been massive changes inside the new ZS EV, the new 10.1” centre touchscreen is a welcome improvement. It’s mostly integrated into the dashboard, and the clarity is very good. More on the screen in the Drive section of this review.

MG’s signature red stitching is all over the cabin, and it’s welcome. There is red stitching on the seats, doors, console, dash and steering wheel, and it looks excellent. It helps break up the black interior nicely, although it was great to see the car still has an ivory headliner and pillars, and this lightens up the interior a huge amount.

Since we’re testing the top-spec Essence, that means we get a panoramic sunroof. It’s a huge 1.3 metres long, and half of it is an electric tilt/slide. There’s also an electric fabric blind to help keep the sun out when needed. I can see many buyers going to the Essence model just for this feature.

There’s a nice mix of materials used in the cabin, and it certainly doesn’t feel cheap at all, with soft-touch materials used on the dash and doors. It all looks fairly classy, and it was also nice to hear the doors close with a nice “thunk”.

There’s a flat panel under the dash for wirelessly charging your phone, but that feature is only on the Essence. It’s a big, flat pad so I expect it’s big enough for all cellphones to sit comfortably on.

Above the Qi charge pad is a single 12-volt socket with two USB ports, one USB-A and one USB-C. Thank you, MG, for doing this. Rear seat passengers get the same USB port arrangement. Another nice thought by MG is the USB-A port up by the mirror, so you can plug in your dashcam without having to run cables. We’re starting to see this more and more and it’s a welcome addition to any car.

Rear legroom is still very good, and headroom is surprisingly good for a car with a sunroof. For 2022, rear seat passengers now get two air vents.

In the boot, it’s still a double-height arrangement, so you can drop the floor down to carry taller items. There’s no spare in there, just a 12-volt pump. Under the floor with the pump is another smaller storage area, it would be perfect for wet towels and togs after a day at the beach. There is another storage area on either side of the boot for loose items.

At 359 litres, the boot is very reasonably sized and extends to 1,187 litres with the seats down.

What’s The 2022 MG ZS EV Essence Like To Drive?

I charged the car up to 100% at a free Vector charger in Hobson Street, Auckland City. With 319 km of range showing, early on a Friday morning the 2022 MG ZS EV and I hit the road south, heading home some 652 km away.

That 652 km should only need one charge, maybe two, and the day is clear so far with no rain to suck out battery power, and no tailwind or headwind to help/hinder progress. This should be a great test of the car’s range. I aim to leave the car in Normal drive mode whenever possible to replicate someone else just jumping in and heading south. I don’t expect everyone would consider putting the MG into Eco mode, so Normal mode is it for today.

On the Southern Motorway, things started off well. As mentioned in the launch article, the car is supremely quiet at 100 kmh. There’s a little wind noise from the A-pillar, but on smooth asphalt at least, it’s whisper quiet inside the car.

It’s not quite the same once you get off that smooth asphalt, as those Michelin Primacy tyres can be quite vocal on most other surfaces. Still, on the whole, it’s an improvement over the previous model.

While cruising on the motorway, time to check out some of the infotainment changes. There’s no doubt it’s a massive improvement over the previous gen of ZS EV; gone is the lag, and (mostly) gone is the infuriating menu system. It’s all fairly simple and standard now, and easy to use. I did find the soft buttons on the screen sometimes took a few pushes to make them work, but that’s not the end of the world. Weirdly, but in a good way I guess, there are hard buttons below the screen for doing, well, many of the same things. There’s a Home button, volume button (not a knob, dammit), AC menu button, front and rear demist buttons, fan speed and temperature adjust buttons.

One of the features of using SatNav in the MG is that it can show you just how far you can get with your current range, on a map. There’s a clear ‘box’ in all directions giving you an idea of your maximum distance. I saw Taupo as a viable destination with my range at the start of the trip, but as the trip went on, this reduced slowly. One of the issues here is that there is only a charger in Tokoroa, and nothing else in between Tirau and Taupo – just Tokoroa. So it looks like that’s going to be my first charge point.

The steering wheel controls seem the same as before and that’s fine with me. They’re simple and clear and they work well. The ZS EV has its adaptive cruise control on a stalk on the left side of the steering wheel, and it doesn’t take long to realise how it works. Actually, I’ve never been a fan of cruise control on a stalk, but this one on the ZS EV is the best I’ve used and I think I could live with it. The steering wheel itself is flatbottomed, which is fine, but the feel of the wheel is not the best. It feels like plastic instead of leather. It’s not terrible and the wheel looks good but it’s let down by the tactile feel of it. One thing that did surprise me is that the steering wheel doesn’t have a telescoping adjustment, only tilt. While it was fine for my length of arms, that was a surprising omission at $54K.

With 50 km of range left, I got a warning on the centre display that I should start looking for somewhere to charge. Tokoroa is still my desired charge point, but I did click on the button on that screen to show me where the nearest charge points were. Tokoroa appeared first, and weirdly Wairakei Thermal Area came up as the second option, some 65 km away. I wasn’t going to make it there.

Pulling into the ChargeNet station at the New World in Tokoroa, it was time to look at the numbers so far. I’d driven 212 km at an average of 75 kmh, the car had used 19.3kWh/100km and I had 35 km of battery left. Based on that, the real-world open-road range for this car in that weather with only me as a passenger would be around, say, 250 km.

Taking the car from 14% to 80% after 38 minutes of charging cost $18.80, and I hit the road again. I’ve only charged the car to 80%, which is normal when travelling. Getting the car to 100% would take a lot longer, so there’s no real point.

On the road again with 210 km of range, it was time for a seat check. On the whole, pretty comfy, although there’s no lumbar adjustment at all. The driver’s seat on the Essence model is powered, while the base Excite does with manual seats up front. The top-spec Essence has heated front seats, but they are only a one-stage unit – so they are heated, or they’re not. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a test car that had single-stage heated seats, and I’ve got to say after a while, the driver’s seat went thermonuclear and I had to turn it off.

Getting nearer to Turangi, I needed to think about my next charge location. I had 107 km of range left and a 63 km drive to Waiouru, so I could charge up now, or risk it all and go for a charge at the Army Museum. If my wife was with me, I’d have no choice but to charge at Turangi, but she wasn’t with me so it was time to throw caution into the wind (turbine) and gamble my distance. I did have a 40 km buffer, but then I forgot about that long, slow climb south of Turangi. That sucked a good 10 km out of my battery. I will admit to switching the car to Eco mode at the top of the hill, just to be sure. I rolled into Waiouru with a whole 15 km of charge left. Too easy

Another 45 minutes and $21.37, and I was off again. The drive from Waiouru south is an easy one for an EV, and I’d done it before in my old Nissan Leaf, and a Kona EV. But with 193 km in the ‘tank’ and a 265 km drive home, I’d still be up for one more top-up.

If there’s one last thing that seemed strange on the MG ZS EV, it’s the indicators – they’re really loud. They could be quieter in an EV, but they are not. Again, not the end of the world but I don’t recall the indicators in the old model being so intrusive. Any passengers I took in the car commented on this.

So, how does the new MG ZS EV actually drive? Overall, very well. It sits well on the road, although on the motorway there is a very slight tendency to wander. The ride on the car – as with many EVs and their weight – is excellent, pounding out bumps and irregularities in the road. It’s not a ‘fun’ car to drive but it isn’t meant to be. It does what it says on the box, and I doubt anyone will be complaining.

I stopped next at Foxton to charge up. After 25 minutes, $14.41 and 25 kWh of charge, I hit the road again to go straight home. On the way, I played around more with the brake regen settings. Like the drive modes, you get three brake regen settings, all selected by a switch on the centre console marked “KERS”. Obviously, the higher the number (shown on the dash) the more regen you get. The highest level isn’t quite one-pedal driving, but it’s fairly strong and should put a reasonable amount of charge into the batteries. On the steepest part of Transmission Gully on the highest regen setting, the car slowed down too much, so I had to switch it to level 2. It did this on Ngaraunga Gorge too, so that gives you an idea of its potential. There are no steering wheel paddles to control brake regen, so you need to lean forward and down to the switch on the console to change it.

After 10 hours of driving and charging, I was home. The total distance was 652 km; my charging cost total was $54.57. The kWh economy the car returned was 19.1kWh/100km. This is more than MG’s suggested rating of 18.3kWh/100km, but that is a combined rating, whereas I did one long open road trip, so understandably my number was higher.

If we compare that total cost to an MG ZS but not the EV model, its claimed fuel consumption is 7.1L/100km. Working on an average cost of $2.84/litre (at the time of writing this), it would cost $260 to travel the same 652 km home from Auckland. So, it cost a fifth of the price of petrol to do this run in an EV, but I did start with a full charge. But even allowing for another charge of say $20, the comparison still ends up at $75 vs. $260.

Yes, yes – there will be people sitting there reading this and saying I had to sit around for a total of 108 minutes waiting for the car to charge. Honestly, big deal. I went for a walk, got coffee, and worked on the laptop. It’s far safer to take regular breaks on a long trip than try and do it in one hit. And I saved around $200, so I’m fine with the wait time.

Summary

There’s no doubt that the MG ZS EV Essence is the best-value new EV you can buy at the moment. It also happens to be built well, drives well, and is well-equipped.

That view might change next month when we review the BYD; however, it won’t take away from MG that it did that Auckland- Wellington run without raising a sweat. Yes, we had to charge three times but saving $200 in fuel (let alone the emissions savings) pays for any food/coffee you might consume while waiting – with change left over.

MG might struggle to fill orders with sales of the MG ZS EV Essence. I could easily live with one, and I’m sure many others could too.

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