MG ZS EV Shipping Updates

There are plenty of folk on this forum raging on 'Where is MY car as Chorley have been allocated 60 cars?'
There is a very simple answer.
SAIC (MG) build in batches NOT to an order.
VW, Ford, Mercedes all build to an order. The dealer puts the order in and your car is given a slot to be built, and some you can follow it along the production line.
Not so at SAIC!

Re the MG ZS EV range, there are 6 options (forgetting colour) available in the UK.
SE SR, Trophy SR, Trophy Connect SR, SE LR, Trophy LR and Trophy Connect LR.
I have no idea what size a batch is, could be 500, 1000, maybe 2,000 or even 5,000, who knows.
Also we have no idea what the true state of the order book for the UK orders is, as that is commercially sensitive.
Maybe there are 400 orders for the SE SR model, and 500 turn up in the batch destined for the UK.
Therefore MG have 100 SE SR cars going spare, Chorley take 60 of the spare cars.
No person has been usurped and got a car before anybody else, because only 400 SE SR cars were ordered!
Untwist those knickers now!

MG (SAIC) will always try to satisfy the 'exact' order i.e. the colour.
They can't offer you a SE SR when you ordered a SE LR, you would lose your government grant in the first instance. The only thing you can change without penalty is the colour.

What does need to happen is representation from MG UK to SAIC China to build a batch or two of the most popular model be it Trophy LR or Trophy Connect LR.
That of course is dependant on the various chips and wiring looms being available!
Those batches have to integrated into the ROW LHD cars, now we can see why things don't just turn up on our shores!
Mg i.e. SAIC are beginning to understand how European car manufacturing works, a be it slowly!
Tesla have the same problems but seem to manage it better!!
Which is a cool story, but...

Fundamentally some dealers have new stock and can't allocate it to waiting customers. Full stop.

That's the frustration here.

Batch build or not batch build. In fact if you are batch building it's in your interest to make sure the dealer can shift orders around.

But they aren't.

And that's just silly.
 
To be honest. I don’t think MG really give a hoot. Car gets ordered, you get it when you get it. If you want something faster, you’re free to look around. They will sell whatever comes to the uk as it’s so competitive (the reason why most of us chose MG).

I had similar issues ordering a Hyundai about 10 years ago. It eventually arrived, never sped anything up my calling the dealership every other week. This time round, I’ve ordered and now I wait. Will be a nice surprise when I get the call to come get it!

My tuppence worth!
 
They won't have a demand problem forever, particularly with the new prices and no grant.

I won't forget the way they've handled this when choosing my next car...

Dacia Duster, Comfort spec, £16345
MG ZS EV, SE long range, £31495

Even at £2/litre £15150 will buy a lot of petrol.
I mean realistically that's only about 151.5 fill ups at that price on a Dacia.
 
After reading this I called Baylis Gloucester today. Although Jordan is not my sales rep he was the person that answered the phone. I asked if it was true that he had said that all LR orders are now being put back to 2023? he asked my name and then went away and came back and said “No yours is still showing as end of Aug early sept” my order was 7 Jan (LR SE) I’m wondering if they just have a sheet and wrote on it what they’ve told each customer and then refer to it and repeat the same response on every enquiry 😂😂
I would take with a pinch of salt because my original order (which was placed in November) is one that has been pushed back to 2023 lol but mine is a trophy so might be why it's longer due to the extra compo ends that it has over the SE. Fingers and toes crossed for you though pal.
 
Why bother asking Miles,...
That's not strictly true, the large batch he was allowed to have by MG were all short range models. He wasn't the only dealer to acquire those SR models as part of that batch either, as my local dealer had some.

If it makes you feel any better one of my mates has just been made redundant from a well known car dealer brand. They sold 4 or 5 marques but are struggling to weather the storm with no vehicles being delivered by lots of manufacturers.

I'm not sticking up for MG, their practices are awful, but if you're a dealer on the brink you would take anything offered to you to keep your business afloat and keep your staff employed.

On another note we looked at ordering 2 Kuga's in work today and quoted 'estimated' delivery was 60 weeks.

I'm still waiting for a Transit Custom in work, ordered Aug 21. To be honest the updates are better than MG in that we do get a monthly update, but all it says is awaiting build, so no clearer than MG either.

[ Edited moderator: trimmed unpleasant quote. ]
 
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Well we got some good news today. 2 of our community ordered LR cars a few months ago and are either delivered or have a delivery date.
Let’s keep fingers crossed that more LR cars start coming through. We will then be able to move onto other forum pages - talking about how many hours it took to charge and how many miles we covered in between plugging in.
 
What I would like to know is how come some orders that were placed this year are getting delivered way before orders for the same car that was ordered last November or December???
If you think of it like a new games console being released. People at various shops all over the country put in pre orders, release date comes around and shops get individual allocation and start working through their pre order list. Now someone in one shop might have pre ordered a month before someone in the shop next door who got theirs.

MG aren’t sitting with a list of all uk orders and allocating out by date order list. Cars are rocking up at Portbury and some poor sod has to try to spread out what stock they have randomly got so that there is a relatively even cover across the uk, otherwise, a single dealer in one town could snaffle a boat load if they got their orders in ‘first’ and the rest of the country would be on this forum asking why MG are only supplying 1 dealer! Just got to wait……
 
I should read all the posts! I see that in Miles' post he says that those cars offered to them were SR, mostly Trophy, with some Connects and 'some' SEs.
I join you in wondering why none of those cars were offered to dealers who had ordered SR cars.
Dealers have there own channels of communication with MG, some find it easy some hard/not at all!
Even living on the Isle of Wight I would visit MG personally to sort this out!
 
If you think of it like a new games console being released. People at various shops all over the country put in pre orders, release date comes around and shops get individual allocation and start working through their pre order list. Now someone in one shop might have pre ordered a month before someone in the shop next door who got theirs.

MG aren’t sitting with a list of all uk orders and allocating out by date order list. Cars are rocking up at Portbury and some poor sod has to try to spread out what stock they have randomly got so that there is a relatively even cover across the uk, otherwise, a single dealer in one town could snaffle a boat load if they got their orders in ‘first’ and the rest of the country would be on this forum asking why MG are only supplying 1 dealer! Just got to wait……
Very well explained 👍🏻👍🏻

Exactly how it should work in 'normal times'.

However in the current circumstances, MG could have reconciled the situation by taking central control, advising people they are 123 in the queue for a Blue ZS Trophy, and allocating based on order date. They could provide a monthly update to say now your are 62 in the queue and so on.
 
If you think of it like a new games console being released. People at various shops all over the country put in pre orders, release date comes around and shops get individual allocation and start working through their pre order list. Now someone in one shop might have pre ordered a month before someone in the shop next door who got theirs.

MG aren’t sitting with a list of all uk orders and allocating out by date order list. Cars are rocking up at Portbury and some poor sod has to try to spread out what stock they have randomly got so that there is a relatively even cover across the uk, otherwise, a single dealer in one town could snaffle a boat load if they got their orders in ‘first’ and the rest of the country would be on this forum asking why MG are only supplying 1 dealer! Just got to wait……
But that's exactly how it should be.
If I ordered first I should receive the first car available irrespective of if my dealership gets all of the cars coming off the boat
 
I guess they do it like this to give the smaller dealers a chance of getting a few cars.

However like I said above, they should have changed it when the shortage started.
 
I guess what we all need to factor in to this are the logistics of delivering cars in the correct order. If the first car ordered is in say Inverness, they’re unlikely to send a transporter with just one car on it up there. They’ll fill the transporter with cars that arrived at Portbury, and Inverness might receive 10, which they distribute to their customers, in order, but the fact that Inverness’s second order was the 500th order placed in the UK means 498 people will end up annoyed thinking MG are delivering randomly.
 
I was talking to a VW dealer and he said (at VW at least) fleet purchases are the priority, then cash buyers, then lease vehicles.
 
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