Well I actually picked up the MG5 yesterday evening. The pickup of the car was very smooth and nothing out of the ordinary from picking up an ice vehicle. A few documents to sign, obligatory photograph for the dealership and a quick run down of the vehicle. Bearing in mind that I am a complete newbie to the EV scene I will make this complaint, whilst the dealership were excellent in all my dealings with them I think they are missing out on actually explaining the basics such as different chargers, what you need to charge and how to charge. A lot of this of course you might say should be researched before you buy, but of course if you watch the EV ads on TV it only involves getting in and driving to your hearts content, so, I would expect that there are a lot of people who are unaware of some of the peculiarities involved with EV driving.
With noting the above, I made a couple of very rookie errors yesterday. I picked up the car and drove off happy to be showing family and friends my new toy. The first mistake I made was not checking that dealership had not charged it to full...it was only around 70%. Not to worry i thought I'll drive around and then go to charge her up again to get used to doing it, rookie error 2. I suddenly realised I had only been provided with a 3 pin charger and of course I have no way to charge from my house. Promptly ordered myself a cable which will come Friday/Saturday. Wasn't too concerned however as there is a Rapid charger near my home so a quick 40 minutes will get me up to a decent level again and so off i went to commit rookie error number 3. Got to the charger and found out there was only one tethered cable which was of course useless to me as it was a Chademo type. Still I had enough miles to get me into work and there was another Rapid Charger fully working (With the right type of charger) nearby so i could charge down there before work while grabbing a coffee. Rookie error 4 because despite showing working the charger was totally refusing to take the RFID card. Thankfully I was able to borrow the boss's charger but in the long-term I think with the shortage of Rapid chargers over here in Northern Ireland, I am going to have to plan my charging a little bit better.
On to the car itself. I will try and go over some of the issues I have noticed on the forum but bear in mind I haven't really had a good chance to play around with all the bits and pieces. The car is as I said during the test drive very comfortable to drive. It certainly appears to handle well and although i have generally been driving in Eco mode, Kers 3 I have found it faultless in its performance, in Sport mode it can definitely take of at a speed that lick whilst not being overpower for most normal drivers.
There have been complaints about the touch screen but I have so far found no issues and it is certainly a lot better than the one that was in my Mazda CX5 and much more responsive and user friendly. Apple CarPlay connected flawlessly on a non apple cable.
One issue I did not was that the car really did mist up very quickly due to the weather and this on the rear side windows meant that a quick glance to the side made you think that there was something coming up the side of you. On the plus side the steaming up cleared very very rapidly with the air on.
On the mileage side bearing in mind the cold and rain I would say that it was giving close to the range claimed but i will find out better in the coming weeks.
Charging. When i finally did get a chance to charge it on the boss's Podpoint and a brief stop on the motorway, it charged first time and with doors locked and unlocked.
I have attached a few photos and will update as i find out a few quicks in the weeks ahead.
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