MG4 Extended Range
I have just complete a 3000km Easter journey in Germany. Apart from cultural sights I found the MG4 performance stats most interesting.
By the way, here in DK the MG4 is rated at a top speed of 180km/h. Not true, I had it at 189km/h on the speedometer (GPS said 184km/h) for several minutes. Nice ride, no wobbling, apart from my heart
. However at a high toll at consumption! ABRP quickly reduced the expected arrival SoC with several % points.
I mainly drove in 2 scenarios:
To and from main "entry point" in Germany from Copenhagen aka purely transportation
Solely Autobahn with an almost constant speed of 130km/h. This gave a consumption around 25-26kWh/100Km. I was mostly using "Intelligent battery heating" (I am not sure why it is intelligent, I was turning it on and off manually). There was no marked difference in consumptions using this, but it did give me some impressive charge figures. Always above 100kWh into way after 50% where it levelled off at around 85kWh, but more impressively I did often get +130kWh for the first 5-10mins, topping at an Ionity with 144kWh (which is the selling point for the Extended Range).
The other scenario are the "non-transportation legs" aka cruising the countryside. Solely non-Autobahn, however you should note that even though the small villages had speed limits at 50km/h they were only 1-2km long, and the countryside speed limits are at 100km/h. This scenario gave me a consumption around 14.5-15kWh.
All very satisfactory. Most of the Autobahn driving were at night with temperatures from 6-12 Centigrade, whilst cruising the countryside mostly were at daytime with temperatures from 10-18 degrees Centigrade.
I charged 15 times (all DC). I did have a few issues, though only one might related to the car. I had 2 BP Aral Pulse chargers appearing online, but they were not playing ball with payment at all (these were a "bigger/older?" stall version, as I normally fancy BP Aral, being a former BP employee), one other charger which simply would not accept payment, 1 charger appearing online but upon arrival it was wrapped in "Not working" banners. Unfortunately most of these issues happened at 1 single "hunt for charge", so I was rather frustrated. And finally 2 chargers from EnBW which I could not figure out how to pay as a non-German resident. I did figures it out on the return leg, purely my fault.
The only issue where the MG could be at fault was at the Ionity which in the end gave me 144kWh, where I had communication issues at 1 stall. For the record, this specific station I have had numerous issues with, with my previous Peugeot e-208, so I had made sure to arrive with a higher SoC about 20%.
In general the most pleasant charging experience was provided by Tesla (which was cheap) and Ionity (which is expensive)
The last lessons learnt I would like to share is my routing/planning setup.
I use ABRP fed with SoC from a vGate ODBII dongle on Android Auto, cabled or wireless with Carlinkit 5.0. I have a Samsung S21 Ultra.
First I would like to say that there is a massive difference in using this setup on single, non-charging trips (which lasts max a couple of hours) and using it as the sole navigation and charge planning tool for multiple days, 12 hours a day. You will rely on it 100% for just not getting stranded, thus you become much more sensitive to any mishaps, which also will occur more frequently, simply because of the intensive use.
I started off using Android Auto wirelessly with Carlinkit 5.0. I did have many fall outs, black screens, freezes etc. Not all related to Carlinkit, but read on.
It was quite clear that there were cooling issues with Carlinkit 5.0, so I moved the unit to a more open area, but not with much luck.
Having to sort out issues with 100-130Km/h with only few options to stop, was in the end just too stressful, so I resorted to the cable version (ps. I do not use QC charging as my phone heats up to the point it is useless). To my surprise I still got black screen issues and I found at times that if ABRP was not in focus on the phone this happened quite a bit. During such issues I noted that Android complained that ABRP had crashed numerous times (I believe that it is the cause of the black screen). In the end I found that if I kept ABRP in focus whilst driving, the phone screen saver would not kick in and all became much more stable. Seems somewhat wasteful to keep the screen on, but as it was charging (cabled Android Auto) it was not an issue.
My very unscientific conclusion is that Carlinkit 5.0 may work, but needs at cool ventilated area, and that ABRP are to be blamed for black screens. As that only happens at long usages, I guess it is a cache, heating issue of the phone or issues with running prioritsed in the background. For the same reason I have turned on crash reporting to ABRP (though technically that could cause a strain as well, so could be a part of the cause?). Somehow hope that they will note the high level of crashes. Maybe I will raise a support ticket with them.
Just a few words from me ;-)
I have just complete a 3000km Easter journey in Germany. Apart from cultural sights I found the MG4 performance stats most interesting.
By the way, here in DK the MG4 is rated at a top speed of 180km/h. Not true, I had it at 189km/h on the speedometer (GPS said 184km/h) for several minutes. Nice ride, no wobbling, apart from my heart
. However at a high toll at consumption! ABRP quickly reduced the expected arrival SoC with several % points.I mainly drove in 2 scenarios:
To and from main "entry point" in Germany from Copenhagen aka purely transportation
Solely Autobahn with an almost constant speed of 130km/h. This gave a consumption around 25-26kWh/100Km. I was mostly using "Intelligent battery heating" (I am not sure why it is intelligent, I was turning it on and off manually
). There was no marked difference in consumptions using this, but it did give me some impressive charge figures. Always above 100kWh into way after 50% where it levelled off at around 85kWh, but more impressively I did often get +130kWh for the first 5-10mins, topping at an Ionity with 144kWh (which is the selling point for the Extended Range).The other scenario are the "non-transportation legs" aka cruising the countryside. Solely non-Autobahn, however you should note that even though the small villages had speed limits at 50km/h they were only 1-2km long, and the countryside speed limits are at 100km/h. This scenario gave me a consumption around 14.5-15kWh.
All very satisfactory. Most of the Autobahn driving were at night with temperatures from 6-12 Centigrade, whilst cruising the countryside mostly were at daytime with temperatures from 10-18 degrees Centigrade.
I charged 15 times (all DC). I did have a few issues, though only one might related to the car. I had 2 BP Aral Pulse chargers appearing online, but they were not playing ball with payment at all (these were a "bigger/older?" stall version, as I normally fancy BP Aral, being a former BP employee), one other charger which simply would not accept payment, 1 charger appearing online but upon arrival it was wrapped in "Not working" banners. Unfortunately most of these issues happened at 1 single "hunt for charge", so I was rather frustrated. And finally 2 chargers from EnBW which I could not figure out how to pay as a non-German resident. I did figures it out on the return leg, purely my fault.
The only issue where the MG could be at fault was at the Ionity which in the end gave me 144kWh, where I had communication issues at 1 stall. For the record, this specific station I have had numerous issues with, with my previous Peugeot e-208, so I had made sure to arrive with a higher SoC about 20%.
In general the most pleasant charging experience was provided by Tesla (which was cheap) and Ionity (which is expensive)
The last lessons learnt I would like to share is my routing/planning setup.
I use ABRP fed with SoC from a vGate ODBII dongle on Android Auto, cabled or wireless with Carlinkit 5.0. I have a Samsung S21 Ultra.
First I would like to say that there is a massive difference in using this setup on single, non-charging trips (which lasts max a couple of hours) and using it as the sole navigation and charge planning tool for multiple days, 12 hours a day. You will rely on it 100% for just not getting stranded, thus you become much more sensitive to any mishaps, which also will occur more frequently, simply because of the intensive use.
I started off using Android Auto wirelessly with Carlinkit 5.0. I did have many fall outs, black screens, freezes etc. Not all related to Carlinkit, but read on.
It was quite clear that there were cooling issues with Carlinkit 5.0, so I moved the unit to a more open area, but not with much luck.
Having to sort out issues with 100-130Km/h with only few options to stop, was in the end just too stressful, so I resorted to the cable version (ps. I do not use QC charging as my phone heats up to the point it is useless). To my surprise I still got black screen issues and I found at times that if ABRP was not in focus on the phone this happened quite a bit. During such issues I noted that Android complained that ABRP had crashed numerous times (I believe that it is the cause of the black screen). In the end I found that if I kept ABRP in focus whilst driving, the phone screen saver would not kick in and all became much more stable. Seems somewhat wasteful to keep the screen on, but as it was charging (cabled Android Auto) it was not an issue.
My very unscientific conclusion is that Carlinkit 5.0 may work, but needs at cool ventilated area, and that ABRP are to be blamed for black screens. As that only happens at long usages, I guess it is a cache, heating issue of the phone or issues with running prioritsed in the background. For the same reason I have turned on crash reporting to ABRP (though technically that could cause a strain as well, so could be a part of the cause?). Somehow hope that they will note the high level of crashes. Maybe I will raise a support ticket with them.
Just a few words from me ;-)
