Aberdeenshire
Established Member
I've had my MG5 for 12 months now and thought I would take a minute to jot down my thoughts on it so far.
- The car: It is a 2022 MG5 LR Exclusive (pre facelift) in blue.
- Delivery: I ordered in October 2021 and took delivery May 2022.
- How much I paid: I lease it through a salary sacrifice scheme offered through my employer. On a 3 year, 10k miles p.a lease it costs £390pcm Gross. This includes servicing, insurance, etc. As I am a high rate tax payer in Scotland, once income tax and NI savings are factored in, and BiK tax added back on it costs me about £210pcm net.
- How I use it: Unlike many (most?) MG5 drivers I am not a taxi driver. I use it for commuting ~20 miles per day and as a family car. I have 2 young kids (3+7) and a spaniel who goes in a crate in the boot. The younger kid has a large car seat, the elder's is smaller. In the first 12 months I drove 9,860miles. We do have another car (a diesel Honda Cr-V) which is more my wife's car, and it also gets used for tip runs / if we need more space (taking kids bikes / going camping / taking the dog crate and the mountain buggy, etc.).
- How I charge it: Probably 60% of charging has been at home (we have a Sync EV 7kW home charger). Maybe 35% was at some public AC chargers at the end of my street as for a long time they were cheaper than my home electricity (I'm not on a time of use tariff, and I don't have solar). We have publicly DC charged probably about a dozen times. We have not road tripped / driven more than about 300miles in a day. I think the highest charge speed I have seen is about 70kW, but I put that down to low Scottish temperatures.
- What do I like about it?
- Incredible value for money. When I bought it I wanted the least expensive EV that could do 200 miles and fit a dog crate in the boot. The Nissan Leaf was the only other car at the time that came close. We liked the look of the Skoda Enyaq but the extras seemed to cost so much and the base level trim was sparsely equipped. The standard range excite trim would have been cheaper, but the extra cost for the LR exclusive was not much and easy to justify.
- Lovely to drive. It is very smooth, very quick, and nice soft suspension gives it a relaxed and comfortable drive which I quite like. It does get flustered when pushed on B-roads however.
- It's a reliable workhorse. I get a lot of comfort from the happy reports of taxi drivers and youtubers like James & Kate who run MG5s as van conversions for their business. They have recently done a 70k mile review where battery state of health was reported as 96% and they do a lot of DC charging. Brakes were still in good shape (regen FTW) and the only negative they really had was that the charging flap latch had failed.
- It's an EV estate and for some reason that form factor is just not common, even now. Works great as a family car.
- The adaptive cruise control and pro-pilot+ make motorway journeys an absolute breeze.
- Android Auto works really well
- It's quite a normal car for an EV - lots of familiar buttons and stalks - very few tablet sub menus to learn
- Comfortable heated seats which are holding up well
- What don't I like about it? I won't pretend it is perfect. Here is my list of things I think could have been better:
- It has no front parking sensors and quite a long bonnet
- No app for pre heating (the facelift model has this)
- No app for charging / ability to set it to stop charging at 80%. Relies on the charger delivering a set amount of kWh.
- No lights in the rear seats
- The headlights are halogens and I would prefer the dipped lights to be better. I live in rural North Scotland and commute on b roads which means dark commutes for over half the year. Our Honda has significantly better head lights. I believe the updated MG5 has better lights.
- Android auto is not wireless (though this can be retrofitted)
- Many people seem to have an issue about it being made by a Chinese company. I don't at all (my TV, my phone and my washine machine are all made by Chinese companies...) but it often comes up when discussing the car online which irks me.
- I have been locked to a charger before and had to manually remove the plastic cover under the bonnet to access the manual charger release. Not sure what that was all about. May not have been the car's fault.
- I would like a heated steering wheel but this might be asking a bit much for the price!
- There is no good reason why there is no frunk.
- I don't particularly like the way it looks (subjective). The LR especially rides too high on it's wheels to fit the battery pack below it. As a result it has lots of empty space below the wheel arches which makes it look a bit silly. A dedicated EV platform (like the MG4) would solve this, but the MG5 is not that. Other than that I think it looks fine.
- It is very much a compact estate - I would have liked it to be a tad larger on the inside, but then it was the only EV estate on the market.
- Conclusion: It's a fantastic car. We are delighted to have another 2 years with it until the lease is up. I recommend it, and MG to value conscious EV shoppers without hesitation.
- What will I do when the lease it up? Yeah I don't know. I would definitely consider the new MG5, or MG4. I am also seeing prices on Tesla Model Y coming down though as it seems to have an enormous boot which I am all for!
