Driving MG4 to Zero%

[JeffMcC75]

Bjorn Nylands latest video he drives the MG4 to zero % and beyond. He gets almost 24km after zero so looks like there's a buffer in the battery management. Not that I'll be trying that out myself

He was using a trophy model, and driving in circles around a car park to see how far he could get.

 

[siteguru]

Stated usable capacity of the 64kWh battery is 61.7kWh ... so there's clearly a buffer. (For the 51kWh it is 50.8kWh, so not so much of a buffer).

 

[Rolfe]

Already being discussed here.

MG4 Reviews from various online publications

Part two. 🤣 True that. I really enjoyed that, thanks for posting it. (I did like it when he said "just turn off all that sh*t and drive it!") I wanted to see how he got on camping in the car. My inner ten-year-old really wants to give it a try. Now I've seen it I think he was a bit of an...

www.mgevs.com

I agree, I won't be trying it. I used to do that on my Golf. I knew I had a minimum of 20 miles once the range display clicked over to zero, and I used that. I remember once hypermiling along the A65 (where petrol stations were closed) and up the M6 to get to Tebay at a very steady 50, and managing a fair bit more than the usual 20 miles.

One, we don't know if the SR battery is set up the same way as the LR, and two, just no.

 

[WonkoTheSaneUK]

and two, just no.

Agreed. Once the car starts interrupting the radio, asking to be fed, I tend to listen.

 

[Rolfe]

Would that be a Trophy? My SE doesn't talk to me, just leaves post-its on the dashboard screen. When I went down to 4% I was listening to the USB player and it was never interrupted. In fact, apart from visual messages which became more insistent, the car behaved normally. It let me overtake someone, going up to 80 in the process, a couple of miles from home when on 5%.

I did get a message around 10% asking if the car should go into economy mode. I said no, because I knew I had 5-8 miles in hand to get home even driving at motorway speeds. I presume that if I had said yes, the car would have cut power and tried to spin out the last few % in the battery.

 

[WonkoTheSaneUK]

Would that be a Trophy? My SE doesn't talk to me, just leaves post-its on the dashboard screen. When I went down to 4% I was listening to the USB player and it was never interrupted. In fact, apart from visual messages which became more insistent, the car behaved normally. It let me overtake someone, going up to 80 in the process, a couple of miles from home when on 5%.

I did get a message around 10% asking if the car should go into economy mode. I said no, because I knew I had 5-8 miles in hand to get home even driving at motorway speeds. I presume that if I had said yes, the car would have cut power and tried to spin out the last few % in the battery.

Yep.

The Trophy's "Hello MG" voice assistant will interrupt the radio to warn of low battery at ~20% & ~10% remaining.
I haven't let it get down to 5% to see if it does it again.

 

[Rolfe]

I imagine it would. When mine got to 4% I was getting drop-down warnings insisting that I charge the car right now please. The usually-green SoC bar on the infotainment screen had also changed to amber - although at 4% there wasn't much of it left to see!

I could practically hear the sigh of relief when I pulled up beside the rapid charger and plugged in the CCS connector, though...

 

[Ian Key]

I could practically hear the sigh of relief when I pulled up beside the rapid charger and plugged in the CCS connector, though...

 

[Rolfe]

Yeah, just like that!

 

[Lovemyev]

Yep.

The Trophy's "Hello MG" voice assistant will interrupt the radio to warn of low battery at ~20% & ~10% remaining.
I haven't let it get down to 5% to see if it does it again.

Likely when it hit's 5% SOC the voice assistant will announce that it has called the MG recovery for you already ! .

 

[Rolfe]

If they all behave the way the one Bjorn drove behaved, nobody's going to be calling MG recovery for that reason. 15 miles beyond when the car said there was no range left at all?

 

[Lucky5]

15miles in a car park but much less if doing 50mph

 

[Rolfe]

I think if you're that low you're not going to be doing 50 mph. If the car would even let you.

 

[Lucky5]

You’ll be doing whatever 6kW of continuous power will provide, more than you would circling a car park anyway at a guess

 

[Rolfe]

I dunno. I think it would depend how far you knew you had to go to get to a charger. Anyone who has missed their charger by 15 miles has made a bad mistake.

 

[Tight Git]

At 0% and zero miles the SE SR tells you to park safely! Fortunately I was half a mile from home and it is all downhill from that point. Not cutting it that fine again...

 

[Rolfe]

The Trophy told Bjorn the same thing, but kept on going regardless.

Interesting gizmo he had in the boot, a battery device to give him enough charge to get to the charge-point. I don't know how far he could have got on that if he hadn't been about 30 yards from the thing though. He was mostly concerned that the Trophy needed more charge than he thought it should have needed to wake up again.

I don't see people driving round with their boots full of heavy get-you-out-of-trouble batteries, but if they ever get them down to the size of a 5-litre can of petrol, they'll get a lot of sales. Possibly. But EV culture seems very different from ICE culture - I've changed myself, I used to be one for hypermiling on fumes - and people actually getting stranded due to emptying their batteries seems to be extremely rare.

My SR was sitting at 71% this afternoon and clearly had enough charge to get to Glasgow and back tomorrow (a little over 100 miles round trip) but why would I? I just plugged in to make sure I could drive off at 100%.

 

[WonkoTheSaneUK]

people actually getting stranded due to emptying their batteries seems to be extremely rare.

Probably because EVs do a lot more whining about running low than ICE cars do.

 

[Rolfe]

My Golf whined a bit too, but not as much as the MG for sure. I think it's a combination of that, and always being able to leave home with ample range, and knowing that running out is going to be a much bigger performance than just fetching a can of petrol.

When I ran my car down to 4% at the beginning of the week, about 11 miles from home an RAC rescue vehicle passed me going in the opposite direction. It was a low loader and there was a car on the back. Could have been anything, but my immediate thought was, that is NOT going to be me!