Limiting power?

[blueman671]

Noticed recently that the car seems to limit power when it gets to below 30%. Seems like it loses half the horses.

Is this a built in battery saving precaution?

I’d kind of understand why, as it saves battery, but if I’m 3 miles from home with 40 miles of range, I’d like to be able to use the 400+ bhp. No ICE car I’ve driven does this when you’re low on fuel. On a ‘performance’ model it’s a crazy feature!

If there’s no way around this, it’s quite annoying. Car is charged up to 80%, which gives about 160 mile range in these colder temps. If you can only use full power between 25%-80% before it limits you, that’s <120miles until you’re driving a bog standard MG4.

Obviously I don’t want to drain the car to 0% before anyone starts whinging. Sometimes life (traffic) gets in the way and you drop below 20% every now and then. But I’d like to be driving ALL my miles in an XPower, not an SE/Trophy.

Can’t believe how poor the range is on these cars. Sick of charging it after 120 miles,

 

[LenEV2016]

As your battery % drops so does the power, there is a thread on it and Bjorn Nyland mentioned it in one of his videos

 

[Chrisdriving]

The ability to pull 320kW out of the same battery the standard MG4 has unfortunately needs some safeguards in place to protect it, a cold battery will limit power also.
Other EV’s are same Ioniq 5N has a few things that limit it’s full power as an example.
Tesla also.

 

[MG Clive]

Can’t believe how poor the range is on these cars. Sick of charging it after 120 miles,

I hope 120 miles is an exaggeration @blueman671, unless you're on a race track every other day

 

[mGizmo]

I hope 120 miles is an exaggeration @blueman671, unless you're on a race track every other day

Sounds about right to me - I get approximately 2 miles per 1%, so 80% to 20% is 60%, or 120 miles. Doesn't bother me (my commute is under 20 miles, and the longest journey I do "normally" is 70 miles), and of course for a rare long journey I can add 40 miles by charging to 100% and some more by accepting the performance hit down to 10% or so.

If you're doing better than that you might as well have a Trophy rather than an X Power... My personal observation is that you only really notice the drop off somewhere between 24 and 23%, and it's not really bad until just above 10.

 

[MG Clive]

Yes it sounds ok when explain it like that @mGizmo

 

[blueman671]

Sounds about right to me - I get approximately 2 miles per 1%, so 80% to 20% is 60%, or 120 miles. Doesn't bother me (my commute is under 20 miles, and the longest journey I do "normally" is 70 miles), and of course for a rare long journey I can add 40 miles by charging to 100% and some more by accepting the performance hit down to 10% or so.

If you're doing better than that you might as well have a Trophy rather than an X Power... My personal observation is that you only really notice the drop off somewhere between 24 and 23%, and it's not really bad until just above 10.

I used to notice it at about 20% but recently it’s been 30% since it’s got cold. So that’s giving 100 miles of useable range with ‘full’ power

 

[Panther]

If I can get 120 miles of full power I'll be happy, my commute is a 27 mile round trip, so if I have to charge every 4 days I can live with that

 

[blueman671]

The ability to pull 320kW out of the same battery the standard MG4 has unfortunately needs some safeguards in place to protect it, a cold battery will limit power also.
Other EV’s are same Ioniq 5N has a few things that limit it’s full power as an example.
Tesla also.

Should have to disclose it on the marketing brochures in my opinion. “0-60 in 3.8 seconds (50% of the time)”.

The more I drive the XPower the more I realise it’s a cash grab by MG. No real R&D gone into it, just dump another motor on the front axle and claim it’s quick.

If the car actually let you know when it’s limiting power that would be good. Some sort of visual indicator that you don’t have 320kw at your disposal would be great.

Sick of putting my foot down and nothing happening.

If I can get 120 miles of full power I'll be happy, my commute is a 27 mile round trip, so if I have to charge every 4 days I can live with that

It’s liveable, it’s just poor. My issue is my Mrs has an electric Niro which is better in every conceivable way and far cheaper than mine. The only upside of the XPower is its power, which if you only get that for 120miles out of the advertised 200+ in real world conditions, it renders it pointless.

Major regret getting this car. Live and learn.

 

[tsedge]

It is going to be interesting to see if this affects battery longevity at all.

MG are pushing the standard pack and cooling/heating hard with the XPower, so the fact that there are limitations isn't surprising, it wasn't engineered as a ground-up performance model (unlike the Ionic 5N).

 

[salty]

To be honest, never check the range, just love the power, and use it regularly. And just charge when needed. And can't say I've noticed a marked drop in power, as the % drops.

 

[Tuareg]

To be honest, never check the range, just love the power, and use it regularly. And just charge when needed. And can't say I've noticed a marked drop in power, as the % drops.

I'm the same, just 'fill it up' when needed and loving the car. Plenty of fast chargers around so range is as far as you want to drive. As I've said before, far too much over analysis by some EV owners instead of just getting out and enjoying an awsome car.

 

[Chrisdriving]

Should have to disclose it on the marketing brochures in my opinion. “0-60 in 3.8 seconds (50% of the time)”.

The more I drive the XPower the more I realise it’s a cash grab by MG. No real R&D gone into it, just dump another motor on the front axle and claim it’s quick.

If the car actually let you know when it’s limiting power that would be good. Some sort of visual indicator that you don’t have 320kw at your disposal would be great.

Sick of putting my foot down and nothing happening.

Buy a Tesla it behaves the same , nothing to do with MG.

 

[blueman671]

Buy a Tesla it behaves the same , nothing to do with MG.

I don’t want a Tesla.
Our Kia doesn’t do this.
And even if it did, 60% range is well above the 120 miles that the XPower gets before you lose power so I could accept that in a Tesla with 300miles of range

 

[blueman671]

I'm the same, just 'fill it up' when needed and loving the car. Plenty of fast chargers around so range is as far as you want to drive. As I've said before, far too much over analysis by some EV owners instead of just getting out and enjoying an awsome car.

It’s not an over analysis. I do roughly 50 miles a day. If I charge it every other day, there’s a very high chance that on day 2 I end up getting limited power before I get home. So 50% of my drives get restricted, meaning I drive an XPower on a Monday and on the way home from work on Tuesday evening, I drive a Trophy.

If the answer is to charge it every day, that’s a very poor proposition for a new EV considering competitors on the market for less money. And I can only charge one EV at a time from home charger so that’s not feasible.

The car is ok. The many shortfalls like vibration, poor infotainment, poor quality cameras etc. can be overlooked as the car is extremely quick. The away the speed and I’d choose a Niro, Kona, Polestar2, Tesla M3 over the XPower everyday.

I think it’s a fair complaint. Feeling very short changed after owning the car for a couple of months now.

 

[tsedge]

I don’t want a Tesla.
Our Kia doesn’t do this.
And even if it did, 60% range is well above the 120 miles that the XPower gets before you lose power so I could accept that in a Tesla with 300miles of range

The XPower is very cheap for the performance it offers, so obviously that has to come from somewhere and in MG's case they achieved it with minimal changes to the existing car which kept the cost low.

You don't get something for nothing.

 

[Chrisdriving]

Hope you manage to sell the car Ok and find something more suitable.

I find when my X power is down even around 20% it still packs quite a punch albeit not the same, it will still out drag a good chunk of cars not that i feel the need to TBH.
IMHO the car is awesome, and for what you can pick them up for is insane for that level of performance.

 

[gary333]

I don't think this XPower specific (in the MG4 range). I am sure my car is noticeably slower below 30% (in fact it seems to be slower as it goes below 60%) but it's more noticeable at 30%.

 

[olliewebb]

You can bring back the power levels at lower levels of charge, but not fully, what you need to do is get the battery hot by dumping energy in and out of it. So hard acceleration and hard regeneration for a while. Also try turning on Intelligent Battery Heating on in the charge menu which can also help, but will reduce your range in most circumstances.

Smashing the car up and down some big hills helps.

You won't get 100% power back under 30% but it'll get better. And it's always worse when it's cold out.

I find it super annoying personally - as the car doesn't tell you it's reduced its power output, but mine goes back soon so good riddance. I've actually managed to get reduced power at a high state of charge once, must've been that I got the battery/motor too hot.

 

[gary333]

You can bring back the power levels at lower levels of charge, but not fully, what you need to do is get the battery hot by dumping energy in and out of it. So hard acceleration and hard regeneration for a while. Also try turning on Intelligent Battery Heating on in the charge menu which can also help, but will reduce your range in most circumstances.

Smashing the car up and down some big hills helps.

You won't get 100% power back under 30% but it'll get better. And it's always worse when it's cold out.

I find it super annoying personally - as the car doesn't tell you it's reduced its power output, but mine goes back soon so good riddance. I've actually managed to get reduced power at a high state of charge once, must've been that I got the battery/motor too hot.

A cold battery does indeed reduce the power and charging ability of the car, however in the instance I am reporting above it's irrespective of battery temps as it's happening in peak summer, and when the car's been doing 100 miles of fast (fast) motorway so all components are very toasty.

To be fair, the same thing happened on my Ioniq so I'm not too concerned, it just seems to be that in the MG4's case it seems to give less power as it goes below 60% (maybe even slightly higher).