MG 5 EV review: An electric car without the sticker shock

Singapore

THE MG 5 EV is the kind of car Elon Musk would applaud. Don't laugh. If Tesla Motor's outspoken chief executive is as dedicated to switching the world to electric cars as he says, then this station wagon is the sort of car he ought to put on a pedestal, purely for the way it puts batteries and a motor within reach of the average car buyer.

Take a moment to see if you can think of another electric wagon for less than S$130,000, with Certificate of Entitlement. You can't because there isn't one, which is what makes the MG 5 EV a remarkable car: while the motoring world debates how soon electric vehicles (EVs) will come down in cost to reach the same prices as today's combustion cars, the MG 5 EV shows how the Chinese have quietly gone ahead and done it.

Granted, the car is helped along to the tune of S$45,000 by a clean air incentive and early EV adoption rebate, but surely that's a plus. Why pay more taxes than you have to?

None of that would be worth a lick if the MG 5 EV were a horrible car (and some EVs truly are), but it's actually among the best wheels you can buy for the money.

The proposition here is simple: the MG 5 EV combines space and plenty of features with electric propulsion and all its attendant smoothness. It's your classic appliance car, in other words, like the kind Toyota excels at making, only it runs on batteries instead of what is effectively outdated technology.

That gives it a real edge. For one thing, lots of people want a smooth and silent car, and really, if you want something smoother and more silent than the MG you'll have to look for another EV. Press the power button and it boots up like a computer, and when you twiddle the drive selector knob to "D", off it goes, propelled by noiseless electrons instead of exploding hydrocarbons.

Some EVs are actually noisy on the move, because they let sounds from the tyres, wind and other traffic penetrate the cabin, but the MG 5 EV does a good job of keeping the outside world outside.

Its acceleration, needless to say, is seamless. There are no gears to even engage, let alone change, and no real sweet spot to hit where a normal engine would feel its best. Instead, the MG simply picks up the pace as if downloading acceleration from the cloud.

That's one battle the MG easily wins; it wafts along so smoothly that a colleague stepped from it after driving it back-to-back with a German sedan with more than 300 horsepower, and conceded that it made the German car feel like a piece of agricultural equipment.

Electric drive is instant, too, so even though the MG doesn't look particularly powerful on paper, in reality it pounces into action like a cat on catnip.

At low speeds, the steering is effortlessly light, but at higher speeds the car does dial down the assistance to make things feel meatier at the helm, so if you happen to find yourself hurtling through a corner you do at least feel some connection between what the front wheels and your hands are up to.

Most of what the MG excels at is down to the fact that it's electric. At the regular car stuff it's less exemplary, but it's good enough to let you know that MG's parent corporation, SAIC, has been to the carmaking rodeo before.

The cabin quality is at least up to French standards, and all the controls are spread across the dashboard without clutter. The steering wheel's button layout is straight out of Volkswagen's, and if the native infotainment system is a little laggy, you can at least connect your phone and use Apple CarPlay or Android Auto instead.

Clearly, there are rough edges, such as slightly mangled English within the infotainment interface and seats that could use more support in the tailbone area, but the MG's biggest sins actually have to do with its electric hardware. You sit unusually high up within the car because the batteries live under the floor, and passengers in the rear have no real footwell for the same reason, so they end up in a sort of knees-up posture. Lots of EVs are like that, mind you, so for the moment it's merely par for the course.

Since batteries add hundreds of kilograms to a car, the EV 5 rides on beefy springs, so it feels more like a Sport Utility Vehicle than a station wagon in the way it jiggles over small bumps. Again, that's something endemic to today's EVs, except for the ones that have fancy air suspension.

Yet, the MG 5 EV excels at the business of simply being a car overall. The boot has a high floor but it's large, at 495 litres, and you can fold the rear seats down to expand it. Both headroom and legroom are abundant in the back, so it's as ready for family wagon duties as any car at this price level.

MG actually sells two versions of the 5 EV, with a more basic Excite variant kicking off the range at S$129,888. But for S$6,000 more, you get the Exclusive version, which has way more safety features (including stability control, a must-have, and six airbags instead of two), the latest driver aids, and some nice stuff, such as an electric chair for the driver (you know what I mean).

Perhaps more to the point, the Exclusive version's battery has roughly 20 per cent more capacity, which gives the MG 5 the juice to cover more than 400km on a single charge in theory. In the real world, 350km ought to be doable (the car's trip computer predicted 379km when we returned the MG), which is enough for a week's motoring and then some.

The MG does accept DC charging, so you can apparently cram 80 per cent of the battery's capacity into it in just 40 minutes, which is handy if your favourite mall has both a charging point and a place that sells decent coffee (I suggest Aperia Mall, which has the third benefit of free parking on weekends).

In spite of its strengths, however, the MG's body shape might make it a tough sell. After all, even Audi struggles to move station wagons here, despite making some of the prettiest ones around. Then there's the car's Chinese provenance, which is something some people turn their noses up at, though probably more out of ignorance than wisdom. If Chinese batteries are good enough for Elon Musk's Teslas, they ought to be good enough for you and me.

That said, people considering electric cars at this stage are likely to be more open-minded than the average petrolhead, so perhaps the MG 5 EV will benefit from positive selection. It's certainly worth a test drive at the very least, just to see what this sort of money buys you in the electric car world.

Time will help, because a few years from now when we're all zipping around on battery power, we'll probably wonder why we didn't embrace electric cars sooner. Products like the MG 5 EV will also make us wonder the same thing about Chinese cars.

MG 5 EV Exclusive

Electric Motor 156hp, 280Nm Battery Lithium-ion, 61.1kWh net Charge Type / Time 7kW AC wallbox / 8 hours Max Fast Charge Type / Time 50kW DC / 40 mins to 80 per cent Electric Range 403km 0-100km/h 8.8 seconds Top Speed 185km/h Efficiency 17.5 kWh/100km Agent Eurokars EV Price S$135,888 with COE Available Now