MG4 Software Update Thread

[Alb]

There has been a good deal of acrimonious discussion in this thread about the external temperature issue. If anyone wishes to discuss the reasoning behind the change they must stick to facts. An unattributed Facebook reference citing a statement from Miles does not count as evidence that he said anything at all on the subject so leave him out of the discussion unless tangible proof to the contrary is provided.

 

[SimonS]

The owner of a phase 2 SE would just have to open the iSMART app to see if it shows ambient temperature.

Just looked. It does.

 

[Rolfe]

Well, there's a surprise. Which infotainment software version are you on?

 

[Lillemy]

Checked my ismart just for fun. My luxury says 16c outside temp, and 25c interior. No way it is that much higher inside as car has been in the garage for quite some hours.

Maybe that is part of the reason why I have to set it to 26c for a comfortable temp inside!

 

[Rolfe]

I had much the same thing earlier today, and it's something I've noticed before. There was a thread where I scanned the car repeatedly for over half an hour and found that the internal temperature dropped every time I scanned it - at first quickly and then more slowly (apart from once giving me that spurious 87C result) until by about 20 minutes it had levelled off a couple of degrees above the external temperature (which never varied, and was correct). The car had been sitting in the garage for about 48 hours at the time, so I'm dubious that the internal temperature was even a degree or two higher than the internal. But that was the result.

Ironically, it's the internal temperature reading or setting that's flaky, while the external temperature is apparently rock-solid reliable. I tend to look at the external temperature in the app, and then make an educated guess at the likely internal temperature, because I'm not scanning it repeatedly for 20 minutes until I get a stable reading!

My car is sitting on the drive. It's been cool and rainy all day. The car hasn't been driven. Around 9 pm when I scanned it, I got 11 degrees external (which it was) and 25 degrees internal (which was highly improbable). I just scanned again and got 10 degrees external and 19 degrees internal. No, I don't believe that. There might have been some solar gain during daylight hours, but it's been dark since about nine, it's been raining all day so everything is wet, and right now, hours after dark, 19 isn't really feasible.

So I refreshed, and got 87 degrees internal and no external reading.
Try again, 17 degrees internal, 10 degrees external.
Next time, 16 degrees internal. It hasn't dropped three degrees in less than five minutes under present conditions.

Basically the internal temperature reading on the app is flaky, variable, and usually higher than reality. The temperature on the HVAC screen has to be set about five degrees higher than the temperature you actually want, in order to get a comfortable cabin.

But the external temperature reading (on the SE as well as the Trophy) is absolutely fine.

 

[Rolfe]

This was posted on the Facebook group by Miles Roberts (an MG dealer)

Outside temp display has never been part of the SE spec. However, the first batch of vehicles we received in the UK had the wrong FICM software installed which showed an outside temp display in the FICM status bar.
This outside temp display never actually worked, it was actually showing random data.

All of these early cars should have been updated before release to customer but obviously some dealers didn’t bother and hence pictures appeared on user forums showing the display.

There has been a good deal of acrimonious discussion in this thread about the external temperature issue. If anyone wishes to discuss the reasoning behind the change they must stick to facts. An unattributed Facebook reference citing a statement from Miles does not count as evidence that he said anything at all on the subject so leave him out of the discussion unless tangible proof to the contrary is provided.

Maybe Tight Git could give us a link to the Facebook post, to establish its attribution, since that seems to be doubtful. I'm not on Facebook myself, but doesn't a direct link to a post usually allow it to be read?

 

[SimonS]

Well, there's a surprise. Which infotainment software version are you on?

R21

 

[Lillemy]

I have looked everywhere for an folder option.

An update to this, plugged in another stick with only like 12 folders, folder option popped up right away. So seems there is a limit of folders on a stick for folder view to work.

The other stick is 128Gb and like 90Gb filled.

At least I can work around this limitation!

 

[Rolfe]

An update to this, plugged in another stick with only like 12 folders, folder option popped up right away. So seems there is a limit of folders on a stick for folder view to work.

The other stick is 128Gb and like 90Gb filled.

At least I can work around this limitation!

That's good! At least it's working in the Trophy still.

Here's a screen shot of the beginning of my music file, that I just added 3 more CDs to last night.

And here's the end.

403 individual files and counting, every single one renamed with composer/work/track no at the beginning of the track name, so I can find the work I want and it will play in order. (The John Cage work at no 1 place is so that I get silence while I find what I want if it starts at the beginning of the stick.) There is no reason at all for MG to have decided to punish SE owners by doing this, I'm certain it's a mistake, but it won't be fixed unless people actually complain about it.

 

[Rolfe]

R21

So I take it that you don't have the external temperature display. Despite having the sensor, obviously.

Bickering aside, can anyone seriously believe that MG deliberately decided not to include this display in a car costing almost £30,000, in 2023? And that they were so determined that the feature should not be available to drivers that when they discovered that the software did indeed enable the display in the SE, they took the trouble to strip it out in newer updates? (Despite not having fixed various other issues, such as the internal temperature scale.)

If anything at all demonstrates that these irritations are simply bugs and not deliberate vindictiveness on the part of MG, this does. It also demonstrates very clearly that new bugs can be introduced with new updates. Sigh.

 

[Deleted member 10041]

I agree that £30k isn't cheap, for a normal car, but it is for an EV of that size and range, they had to make decisions to save money somewhere.
I do not see it as punishing those with SE cars.

I would be interested in hearing MGs response when you hear back from them with regards your list of complaints about the SE cars

 

[Richmorr]

I agree that £30k isn't cheap, for a normal car, but it is for an EV of that size and range, they had to make decisions to save money somewhere.
I do not see it as punishing those with SE cars.

I would be interested in hearing MGs response when you hear back from them with regards your list of complaints about the SE cars

But the car has all necessary hardware and software so MG made a U turn disabling features to make the trophy a more cost-effective / better value option

 

[Rolfe]

I agree that £30k isn't cheap, for a normal car, but it is for an EV of that size and range, they had to make decisions to save money somewhere.
I do not see it as punishing those with SE cars.

I would be interested in hearing MGs response when you hear back from them with regards your list of complaints about the SE cars

I think you're being excessively keen to absolve MG of actual bugs here. The software to enable external temperature display (and folders in the USB player) costs literally nothing. The temperature display is actually there in R13 SE cars. As siteguru pointed out, the cost element would have been to remove it, if this had been deliberate!

I don't see it as punishing those with SE cars at all. I see it as glitchy software. If it had been deliberate, then yes, I would see it as vindictiveness, because the cost is literally zero and the inconvenience caused is significant. But I don't believe for a moment that's what happened. (On the other side of the coin, do you believe that MG decided that Trophy owners shouldn't be allowed to see the HVAC display for more than a couple of seconds after pressing the star button, or that their disabled LKA should switch itself back on again every time the central screen switches between light and dark views, or that their phones should repeatedly unpair themselves or... insert the significant list of bugs that only affect Trophies.)

What I am concerned about is that, post facto, we'll see MG representatives doing the same as they've been doing about the undertray etc, and rather than take simple steps to rectify the problem, pretend that it was done on purpose.

 

[Rolfe]

But the car has all necessary hardware and software so MG made a U turn disabling features to make the trophy a more cost-effective / better value option

There is already ample differentiation between the SE and the Trophy. Fake-leather seats, heated seats, wireless phone charging, 360-degree camera, reversing camera, electrically folding wing mirrors, inbuilt sat-nav, driver fatigue monitoring... and I've probably missed quite a few.

All these things are advertised, and indeed it's made clear in the manual which features are on the Trophy and which the SE. We buy the SE in the knowledge that we're not getting these features.

An external temperature readout is as standard as having a clock on the dashboard. Indeed, if they wanted to disable the clock, that would be less inconvenient, as I wear a watch. A working USB music player isn't too much to ask for. It's all there, it's just missing a tiny bit of code that's in the Trophy system. And so on.

Disabling standard features in the infotainment softare that cost nothing to include, and without documenting this in any way or giving SE owners any way to know that they won't get these standard features (or indeed will have them taken away from them although they had them in the beginning) is not saving any costs at all.

 

[Robf]

Is it bmw that charges to turn on the heated seat option?

BMW controversy: Are subscription extras the future of cars?

Car buyers will increasingly be faced with subscription models for things like heated seats and driving assistance technologies.

www.euronews.com

 

[PristDean]

Is it bmw that charges to turn on the heated seat option?

BMW controversy: Are subscription extras the future of cars?

Car buyers will increasingly be faced with subscription models for things like heated seats and driving assistance technologies.

www.euronews.com

Porsche do it too. It's an interesting deployment for a new car, makes me think they just make one car with all the hardware needed, you then have to pay to activate features.
So in theory that may reduce production costs as just one car needs to be made. But the positive is, the consumer gets all the build quality and goodies and it's one car at one price at the outset too. You can also test out and keep the additional features you want, switch on and off... but at a monthly premium... therein is the sucker punch maybe.

 

[Rolfe]

Well, if MG was giving SE owners the option to pay a premium for a working USB player, or an external temperature readout, or a radio that stayed turned off, or the ability to disable the auto-locking, maybe there would be some sense to this.

Realistically, if they were going to do it, they'd do it with the big stuff. Not with fiddling little standard features that every ICE car built in the past 10 years has had with nobody making a big deal about it.

 

[Deleted member 10041]

I think you're being excessively keen to absolve MG of actual bugs her

One thing I could never be accused of is sticking up for MG.
Apart from @bowfer and @PristDean I've probably been more critical of MG than most, which has resulted in a variety of responses from various keyboard warriors in here, just because I had the temerity to be critical of the car.

It's a cheap budget EV, they have had to save money in a lot of areas to make it so keenly priced.

There is questionable build quality and quality control on a decent percentage of there cars.

The material quality is questionable and the software goes from crap to slightly annoying.
The customer service is non existent and the dealer experience is also questionable in a large amount of cases.

The positives in all this is they have made a great riding, good sized family hatchback with a decent range.
This has been done on a budget by a budget brand. If you have received a car with no hardware issues and very little software glitches then you have received a really good car at a really decent price.
If MG had put support in place to back up their car then they would have really cleaned up

As I said I look forward to you sharing the reply you received from MG when you contact them with your concerns/complaints

 

[Rolfe]

I agree with you, I really do. Although my dealer has been reasonably helpful, to be fair. I merely don't believe that the software glitches I have described were deliberate decisions taken to save money, because unlike the rest of the stuff, they don't save any money at all, and relate to things that are so standard that there's no "premium differentiation" aspect to them. If you've already pared the features more or less to the bone, saving on everything down to the wing mirror folding, there's no percentage in further degrading the customer experience by disabling standard features that don't cost anything to be enabled.

Now whether MG will admit that these are unintentional bugs, or whether they'll become "characteristics" like the droopy undertray, I don't know.

 

[Deleted member 10041]

Again, after the amount of posting you do in here, you must have realised by now that MG will admit to nothing "They only sell the dealers the cars!"

MG need to shift there mentality away from the bag of bolts days of the MG 3 into the present where they really do make a very decent budget EV.

How many items have you included in your complaint to them?