Buyers Guide: 2020 MGZS EV. How Does it Hold Up Now?

MG the brand was bought by the Chinese in 2005. And I remember the outcry. “Another British icon gone!” But for me, I didn’t hold much affection for it if I’m honest.

In my youth of the very late 70’s and 1980’s, MG were already living on past glories, but was still considered to be a sporty ‘icon of Britishness’. Having given us things like the MGBGT, and then later ‘delights’ like the MG Metro and the MG Maestro. The (ahem) zenith of this being the MGF/TF of course.

My first foray in to flipping cars on my own (my dad was a car trader) was when I bought a blue MG Maestro that the old boy selling it had decided to rearrange the front of by not stopping in time. I was just 17. Anyway, I jammily (apparently not a word) managed to find two front wings, bumper and a bonnet in the same colour from the local breakers, and I put it back to the vision of beauty MG had let it leave the factory as. This car takes a lot of the blame for my career choice, and interestingly, it was the exact same colour this 2020 car is.

The Chinese MG ZS was released to these shores in 2018 with the EV version following a year later. A sports car or even a sporty car it is not. And remains, for me a weird thing perhaps to call an MG. Then one remembers the Maestro. So perhaps not.

But enough nostalgia, what is a used MG ZS like now? How has it held up, and should you consider one?

Here I have a six and a half year old example, that’s covered 50,000 miles, and is in the top ‘Exclusive’ trim.

Let’s rewind though first. What actually is it?

When these landed they were the first decent sized family electric SUV that you could buy. Five seats, proper boot. Think Qashqai in size.

Two trims only. Excite and Exclusive. Same mechanical bits on both. Front-wheel drive, 105 kW / 143 PS, 353 Nm, 0-62 in 8.5 seconds, 87 mph top speed, and CATL battery pack, with liquid thermal management. 44.5 kWh nominal. Useable is~42kWh. So this big-ish family wagon has about the same size battery as a Fiat 500e!

Range

WLTP is 163 miles combined and AC charging is ~7kW. That means overnight on a charger will take about six hours or so. DC (CCS) charging rates are pretty hilariously poor by today’s standards at only 50kW peak-and is hardly ‘rapid’ but 10-80% is achieved in around 40 minutes. The charging rate falls off a cliff after 80%. A road trip monster this is not!

No heat pump and it has a PTC heater. So efficiency is fine in the ‘not winter’ but you will definitely notice a range hit in the cold months. This is perhaps not the EV that you’ll win many arguments with Mr.F.UDerman down the pub or on FB. Except when you tell him just how cheap to buy and run this thing is of course (if you can charge at home)

Specs

When new, the somewhat ironically named ‘Excite’ base model was £28,495 and the Exclusive trim was about £30,995 -before the old Plug-in Car Grant which took it down to the mid-twenties. And it sold well. (Early on there was a £1500 MG discount contribution also, but only in limited quantities.)

The ‘Excite’ trim gets cloth seats, rear sensors, 8-inch screen with CarPlay and Android Auto, keyless entry, adaptive cruise, 17-inch alloys.

The top ‘Exclusive’ trim is the one most people bought: fake leather, heated front seats, (electric on the driver’s side), big panoramic roof with sunshade, silver roof rails, folding heated mirrors, rear camera, extra speakers plus blind-spot and rear cross-traffic warning.

Five people are easily accommodated inside. Leg and headroom a-plenty for front and rear occupants alike. The rear seat will take two bigger car seats and space in the middle for a booster seat.

Boot is 448 litres with the seats up and 1,375 folded. In the patented CtrlAltRefuel ‘Standard Spaniel Metric’, that’s a proper two and a half spaniel score.

No Front Froot (frunk) disappointingly-although you can buy an after-market one that’ll add a bit of storage. Until then, the cable lives in the boot like 2019 told it to. Interestingly, MG supplied these cars with just a ‘Granny Cable’. Not a Type 2.

Prices

A base 2019-2020 car with 30-60,000 miles is now sitting around £7,000 to £8500. Exclusive examples from about £8,000 up to 10 grand for a very nice one.

The later facelift cars with the 51 kWh or the 72.6 kWh Long Range packs are a different buy, a much improved car and quite a few thousand more. Look out for a review on that new shape model from us on the channel in the near future.

But how is this cheap Chinese SUV that’s nearly 7 years and 50,000 miles in holding up? And what should you look out for if you’re in the market for one?

And what about ‘tHe BaTtErY’?

Right, let’s start with the battery, because that’s the first thing anyone says and where the Facebook experts will have you getting a bit worried.

At six and a half years old and 50,000 miles covered, you’d perhaps be right to be concerned before parting with your hard-earned, and so, I plugged it in and pulled a state of health report/independent battery certification. The result was exactly where I predicted: 87%.

No that’s not a miracle or unusual. Call it about 2% a year, although the biggest -of the overall small- degradation you’ll find, will happen in the first couple of years. And this is what a used NMC pack of this age ought to look like if it has been a car and not a taxi. The initial degradation will first be swallowed up by the unused buffer, and the car will still cover roughly the same mileage range it did when new. So no battery or range concerns here or on any other examples I’ve had. These cars look after their batteries well, and they are very reliable.

Battery Health Report provided by ‘Generational’

The original warranty was 7 years / 80,000 miles, and 8 years on the high-voltage battery -which they guarantee to be at least 70% State of Health. This one is getting toward the end of that battery warranty window but is still covered for over a year yet. 87% SOH is a little above usual scores and battery issues will not be something you will need to worry about. Even when it’s out of manufacture cover.

The pretty pathetic 50kW DC peak charging rate is another indication of what this car was designed to be.

Home charging is where it make sense. Don’t pretend otherwise and then get cross at Membury Services on a road trip-unless you want to have a long lunch. We drove it back from Gloucester ~125 miles in heavy rain and it made it easily with plenty spare.

Wear and tear.

These were and are cheap cars. The interior materials are a bit low quality in places. Switches wear off the shiny silver coating. On Exclusive trims the fake leather wears (well cracks) on the seat-base bolsters. This is a cheap enough repair at your local friendly trimmer’s.

Cloth seats on the Excite trims is better (and is warmer on a January morning) but the extras like heated seats and pano-roof on the Exclusive spec are a much nicer thing to live with in my opinion.

The 17-inch alloys are nice, but as with any diamond cut wheel, they can and do delaminate, and a proper factory-look refurb is not cheap. Budget for it or consider a one colour change to all silver or black maybe. Or just live with it of course.

Rust.

This is one of the internet’s favourite scare stories on Chinese cars and you’ll see them frothing about lower chassis, subframe, corrosion, British salt, “Chinese shit, they’ll all be rusty….” and so on.

Every ZS EV I have bought has been alright. No crusty outriggers, no horror-shows underneath and nothing corrosion-wise that has even attracted an MOT advisory. Rusty brake discs aside.

That doesn’t mean you should skip looking. Particularly if the car has spent its life in a wetter part of the country.

Get it on a ramp or look underneath to put your mind at ease. MG gave these a long anti-perforation warranty, but they are not immune to corrosion. Also where the battery pack meets the chassis.

Otherwise there’s the usual fairly consistent things like 12V battery death. Five years or so is a common time for the 12V to play up. If it hasn’t been done, so do it before it dies on you on a wet Tuesday in December.

Tech & Software.

The 8-inch screen can freeze, lag or reboot, and the Ui is dated and average at best. CarPlay mostly saves the day however. These are comfortingly low-tech things and even have analog gauges for the speedo cluster, with good old fashioned needles and dials. You even get a rather nifty 12V charge status gauge.

MG ZS Instrument Cluster

Early cars had BMS software quirks that screwed with indicated range, and other things, until a dealer update solved this. Most 2020s should have had this ‘Comfort 2’ software update done by now.

There is no App for MG’s of this age. So you can’t precondition the cabin from your phone whilst in bed sipping coffee sadly.

Charge port on the nose flap can be problematic. The flap itself is spring-loaded and is a bit awkward. It’s not easy to plug it in unless you are really very short or have a toddler about that can do it for you. If you have no problem bending right over, or getting down on one knee, it’s fine.

Service History

It SHOULD have some service history. The internet myth about EVs not needing to be serviced is not true. Sure, it’s less critical than it is on a fossil vehicle but ones with history will sell much better than those without. And it shows you that the last owner actually took some pride in it of course. Also cars that have had the recommend services will be more likely to qualify for any warranty work without a fight at the dealership.

I’ve had some electrical niggles including a couple of cars that had charging issues and required a dealer visit. Also one car had decided to not communicate with the keyless part of the keys. All these things were swiftly sorted under warranty. One requiring a new charge port. The other a software update

MGZS charge port location. And a Tesla Dog.

TPMS. ADAS. Beeps, bongs,

Same as every mid-price Chinese EV of that and this era but it’s not too bad. It’s pretty polite. The LKA lane assist is rudimentary and borderline dangerous, and I would avoid it totally. The Active Cruise Control is alright though.

What’s it like to drive?

Still good. Comfortable rather than remarkable or exciting. Not massively quick, but more than adequate. That (353 N) torque still shoves it along in a way the frankly ghastly petrol ZS version can’t.

No full one pedal driving option on this iteration, but there are three regen modes. Level 3 giving an almost full 1PD feel. Again I’ll use my “it’s 1 PD-lite” line here as it will not quite bring the vehicle to a full stop. Instead it’ll creep along, much like a traditional automatic until you hit the brake pedal and engage Auto-hold.

And here is the familiar moan: Front traction from a standing start in the wet can get a bit lively. Instant torque, front wheel drive, 17-inch tyres means you can often wheel-spin, even sometimes in the dry. Now, I’m alright (well less bothered) about it in this instance. It’s cheap and older, but it’s good value and a decent enough car for the money. And, as such, I’m happy to ‘manage my expectations’ here (and you just need to be gentle with the throttle).

Ride is family-SUV soft. Fine on a motorway. Good around town. It’s not a B-road toy obviously. Steering is weighted well enough, not too light, but perhaps a bit vague -and it’s not the sharpest handling thing you’ve ever driven. And again that’s more than acceptable for what it is. On the whole it’s well behaved and predictable.

Summary

This isn’t the most efficient EV ever. Winter will take a bite because there is no heat pump and the PTC heater is thirsty, the car is brick-like and the battery is low-slung as this was a multi-fuel platform vehicle that is slightly compromised because of that.

For school, shops, work commute even, and the usual family stuff it still works as well as it did when new. It was never a Scotland-and-back-on-one-charge car. A family bus or second car or even as a shorter range main vehicle is its wheelhouse. And in this niche it is very capable..

For me, the ‘Exclusive’ spec still feels like a lot of car for the money. The ‘Excite’ is obviously the most frugal option if you don’t care about posh heated seats or a roof you can see through. Visibility is fine, you sit nice and high up, and it’s easy to get in and out of. It’s an old-fashioned SUV…in a good way. Reassuringly boring perhaps.

If you want a 200 miles plus car, with a heat pump and 150kW+ at the rapids, then this isn’t for you-and you’ll have to spend a load more dough on something else. It is however, a thoroughly decent, reliable, no-fuss value for money family SUV with bags of space. It’s a cheap car that was always a cheap car. But it’s also still pretty decent and is unpretentious.

If you can manage those expectations and perhaps just want no fuss, reliable transport, then it’s well worth considering.

This first-generation ZS EV still makes a lot of sense.