Over the weekend we were lucky enough to have a Marvel R on loan to us for three days. As they are still somewhat of a rare beast I thought I'd spend a few moments to write down my thoughts, mainly this is a cathartic process to get everything we thought about it on paper so as we have so many options with MG at the moment (none of which will arrive soon!) it's hard to know which way to jump.
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Let me start by saying that after our time with the Marvel R, neither of us appear to have developed any superhero powers - I'll admit to being somewhat disappointed at this, it would have been an excellent selling point, hehe. Now, getting back to reality, the first thing that struck me is that it is nowhere near as big as we expected it to be - it's considerably wider than the ZS and there is far more legroom for rear passengers, but there is less boot space (until one folds the rear seats down), more on that later.
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Build quality is good, very good in fact. It feels far more solid than the ZS (yes, I know it should for the price uplift, but one can never be sure about these things) and the quality of the materials used in the interior are a real step up from previous MG models. The leather is very good quality, I'd go as far as to say very, very nearly as good as that in our Mercedes (it's a little 'softer' overall so perhaps will not be as hard wearing, but only time will tell that). The seats are super comfy, both front seats are electric with the driver's have 2 memory positions as well - a useful upgrade over the ZS; both seats also have three levels of heating and cooling. When you turn off the car and open the driver's door the seat automatically rolls backwards to make getting in/out easier (and the reverse when you enter the car and turn it on) - this was a nice touch but I would suggest rear passengers get out before the driver so not to get their legs squashed!
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The dashboard driver's display is good, it's a quality screen and useful information such as the vehicle speed seems to be far easier to see with just a glance than on the ZS, especially when the cruise control is turned off. the satnav in the centre of the screen is nice when using the navigation, but I could not find an option to change this to anything else when not using it and this seems to me like a loss of valuable real estate for other functionality (if it can be changed, great, would love to know how).
Now to the elephant in the room, almost literally, that enormous centre mounted infotainment screen. To be honest, it's way bigger than it needs to be and in my opinion, in the wrong place - it should be smaller and mounted on the dashboard in a more conventional position. There is nothing on there that needs nor warrants that much screen real estate, it just means things are bigger (think 65" TV vs 42" TV - unless you have a barn of a room you just don't need a TV that big). There are two really big downsides to the screen being mounted where it is, 1) it means that to do pretty much anything other than indicate or turn the cruise control on/off means looking down and right (there's no RHD version yet) away from the road and 2) it catches the sun all of the time and is really reflective - this means that at certain times trying to find the information is doubly difficult due to reduced visibility.
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Almost all of the functions need to be controlled from the infotainment system and the menu system can be exasperatingly complex at times. For instance, to change the language between English and French we needed to navigate to the Bluetooth menu and four options down was the menu to change the car's language - there may have been an easier way, but we couldn't find it anywhere! Whilst on the topic of languages, once we had put the car into English, all of the menus, the dashboard etc. happily complied, as did the navigation until it came time to direct us, then she would only speak French despite the car's language being set as English. Now this isn't a problem for us being bilingual, however it does seem to be somewhat of a major failing that the navigation does not speak the same language as the car! That said, the navigation was quick, has live weather and traffic and seems to know where (most) of the public charging points are - I would have no hesitation in using it on a day-by-day basis, it's far better than the absolutely hateful Volvo-based system in our Aston. Once we got the hang of where the important functionality was buried within the infotainment system most stuff was generally OK and useable, but we never really got used to the positioning of it.
Underneath the infotainment system is the 'handbag shelf' according to my wife - heaps of storage here and also the two front regular USB ports (no USB C option). Access to these ports is difficult and requires one to have arms like Mr. Tickle because of the huge infotainment system getting in the way! I could see us just leaving two cables plugged in there all the time (Apple/Android) as it was such a faff to plug in/out. I responded to a post on the forum saying I really didn't see the need for Bluetooth Carplay/Android Auto - I totally rescind that comment due to how badly designed the front USB ports are on this car. Continuing the topic of bad design, one would have thought that the 'handbag shelf' would have been the perfect place to put the induction charger but oh no, that is a slim 'pocket' in the centre armrest; I'm not sure what the thinking was there at all to be honest, but it's just a bit naff and overly complex.
Rear seats - brilliant. Acres of space, super comfortable. I hate travelling long distances in the back of cars but I'd happily do a long trip in this, I'd hesitate to say class leading, but it would take a very special something to surpass them. The boot (trunk) is flat (easy for the dog to jump into), but a little smaller than the ZS. We had to remove the sliding boot cover for the dog to be able to get in - not a problem and far easier to store that the rigid ZS version. Once the rear seats are folded there is heaps of space - a day trip to IKEA could surely be supported.
The rear tailgate is electric and works from either the button or a funky 'kick' sensor under the rear bumper - this appeared temperamental at best and I think it's far quicker to press the button on the keyfob as one is walking towards the car or even the button on the trunk once you get there, the whole hopping around kicking underneath the car seemed a bit of gimmick really. The 'Frunk' is great, plenty of space for an aircraft cabin-sized wheelie bag in there (although it's not as big on the AWD tri-motor version).
The car drives well. It's super-smooth and exceptionally quiet. We couldn't hear either of the motors and the road noise was virtually non-existent. Wind noise is average although even at 130kph it was not loud. Performance in this dual motor version is good, more than fast enough for any SUV style car and why anyone would need to get from 0-100 kph (0-60 mph) in under 5s (in the tri-motor version) in a car like this is beyond me. The autonomous driving aids are terrible - the only one worth using is the adaptive cruise which works fine. The traffic jam assist is just annoying and the 'tired driver' assist is frankly terrifying on the types of roads we have where we live as one needs to drive in the middle (too narrow) or off the edge (there's a huge tractor coming in the other direction) and it trys far too hard to take over. All of these aids can be turned off, but annoyingly the 'tired driver' one comes on each time the car is started regardless and of course, we only remembered to turn it off when the car tried to harpoon us into the path of an oncoming agricultural behemoth. As with the ZS, it has three levels of KERS/regen although even in level 3 it is far smoother than the ZS - this can be quite nice, but it is certainly not a single pedal driving experience (which the ZS can be in L3). This car has 4 driving modes, Winter, Eco, Normal and Sport. We spend most of the time in normal with a few incursions into eco and sport. In sport it is a rocket ship even without the third motor, more than fast enough for any family car. The car has a two-speed gearbox and but we never felt it changing gear, so assumed it was all working and doing it's thing in the background.
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I loved the lights, front and back. The white light strip on the front looks super cool and the light at night is beyond excellent, certainly the best on any car we have had. It's a silly thing, but I loved the animation on the rear lights when the car is unlocked too.
Economy is OK, it's not spectacular but we averaged 18.2 kWh/100km (5.5km/kWh / 3.4 miles/kWh) in varied driving over the three days. The car was 100% charged when we collected it and gave an estimated range of 510 km. We did 309 km and had 49% battery remaining, so I'd guess that the range estimate is fairly accurate. It has a battery heat pump as standard, so I'm sure that helps here by ensuring that the battery is at optimal working temperature.
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Overall, we really liked the car. It has some pretty big failings with the autonomous driving aids that I'd like to see fixed with a software update and I'm not a lover of the huge screen, but I'm sure love (or at least acceptance) would come with time. It's a super comfortable car to drive or be driven in, all round visibility is great and it's quieter than any other electric car I've driven.
Cost wise, it's a big uplift over the ZS and to be honest, that's a great car in itself, but the quality uplift here, as well as the internal space, certainly justifies that. If you don't need the extra passenger space I'd go for the ZS, it's price point is unbeatable in the current market. If however you do want a big electric family car, looking at the current options, this is hard to say no to. When one considers the price it's quite possibly unbeatable in its class; to get a similarly specified Skoda Enyaq for instance would be in the region of 20k€ more than the Marvel R - that's a huge uplift in my opinion.
Will we buy it? Well, the order is still in and not been cancelled yet ;-) Hope that you may find this useful, for us it was good just to write down the pros and cons as we remembered them, helps to focus the mind.
and maybe my anxiety will disappear 
.
