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A 3000km journey with the new MG5

Luis989

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Jul 26, 2022
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Location
Paris
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MG5
Hello everyone, new poster here. I’ve had a new MG5 for 3 weeks now and done 3000km in it (1864 miles), mainly on two long trips on motorways, so I thought I’d share my thoughts on it. I bought it in France where I currently live. The two trips were from Paris to Central France with 3 bikes on the roof, 5 people in the car and the second trip was from Paris to Burnley in the north of England, with just 4 people in the car and no roofbars. So I can also share my thoughts on the motorway infrastructure between England and France.

mg5-bikes2.jpg


First off, 3000km of motorway driving in 3 weeks is a lot, and that’s not how I’ll use the car for the majority of the time, I usually do mostly city driving and averaged around 8000km (5000 miles) a year over the last 10 years. These summer holiday trips are the exception. The car is the new MG5 that has been available in France for a few months and is now being released(?) in the UK, it’s the long range Exclusive model with a white semi-leather interior. It probably has a different name in the UK.

I picked up the car on a Tuesday and set off on holiday on the Friday, so I didn’t really have a lot of time to get to know everything about the car, especially when it comes to charging and the various systems such as MG Pilot so I learnt to use them as I went. A/C was on on all trips and I used Comfort mode and Kers 2 pretty much all the time. I didn’t treat it differently to my old car except accelaration is much faster on the MG5, especially getting up to motorway speeds.

mg5-bikes.jpg


The first trip was a 800km round trip to central France. I carried 3 bikes on the roof, 5 people in the car (3 adults and 2 children) and a full boot. I drove at 110km (68 mph) on the motorway and stopped once each way to charge. I used mostly Ionity chargers on the motorway, they are expensive but I never had an issue with them. I charged for free at the place I was staying. Consumption on the motorway was around 26 kWh/100km (~2.4 mi/kWh). Consumption was pretty high with the 3 bikes on the roof, but with young kids on the back I had to stop around every 150-200km anyway so it worked out pretty well (more about consumption in a bit).

The second trip was a 2000km round trip to the north of England, together with a few trips to Manchester. This time without bikes or roof bars, and only 2 adults and 2 children in the car. On the motorway in France I drove at 115km/h (71.5 mph) and in England I drove at 70mph. In France I averaged 20 kWh/100km (3.1 mi/kWh) and in the UK motorways I averaged around around 4.2 mi/kWh which is a massive difference. I don’t really have an explanation for that difference but I did notice much more wind noise on the French motorways than on the British side (maybe lack of trees lining the motorways in France???). The motorways in france also tend to have a lot of long uphill/downhill sections which could explain the different consumption numbers.

mg5.jpg

I used Ionity and Gridserve on the motorways and both worked well. There are many more service stations in the UK than in France so there’s very little risk of running out of battery on the journey. For the range I was limited by how long the kids (and wife) needed toilet breaks or for eating, so I never really pushed the range to it’s limit, but it’s nice to be able to drive for 2+ hours without worrying about the battery.

What I did notice though is that even though there are a lot more chargers in England and they are spaced much more frequently than in France, there are also a lot more electric cars, so I needed to wait for one to become available quite often, something I never experienced in France.

So what do I think of the car as I arrived back home (after being stuck in Folkestone for 5 hours) and the ranged ticked over 3000km. First the car performed excellently. I had 0 problems with charging at home or on motorway fast chargers. Coming from a small hatchback, it’s fantastic having such a big boot and for the kids to have so much space on the back seats without being crammed. It makes long journeys so much more tolerable/enjoyable.

Also having MG pilot is great and I used it pretty much all the way. The Lane keeping + Adaptive cruise control really makes driving on motorways a breeze. In towns it’s very comfortable and easy to drive. The 360 camera system is brilliant to get in and out of tight parking spots. The screen is fantastic and very fast, although we mostly used Android Auto so I have no idea if the built in system is any good. The AC is also much better than in our old car which the wife really appreciates.

The only bad thing I can say about it is that I wish it was a bit less noisy at motorway speeds. I honestly have no idea why there’s such a big difference between driving on French motorways and British ones, but both times there was noticeably more wind noise in France than in England.

Overall, we are extremely happy with the car and are looking forward to using it. In fact we’ll probably use it more more often than our old cars because it feels so much better inside.
 
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Fantastic report and welcome to the forum.
Possibly better consumption in the UK as our motorways are slower due to the volume of traffic. :)
 
Thank you for taking the time to type out your thoughts on your new car. Glad you are enjoying it.
 
Great write up of your experience so far. Regarding the wind noise on motorways in France being louder than in the UK, perhaps the French use a different composition of tarmac that is maybe harder?
 
Thanks for a very comprehensive assessment of your new car. Very informative.
Are you a motoring journalist lol.
 
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