MG’s ZS EV is Australia’s most affordable fully electric vehicle, but is the price too good to be true?
Well recently I was able to test drive the ZS EV Excite to find out exactly what you get for the 44,990 drive away price tag, and I have to say that I’m pleasantly surprised.
Now I should start by saying that I have driven a Tesla (Model 3) but can’t even begin to compare the two given the price difference and features. Tesla’s new mid-sized SUV costs around 33 thousand more than the MG ZS EV, so we’re talking about two different ends of the market.
The first thing I noticed when climbing into the ZS EV is that, despite being a fully electric vehicle, it doesn’t look or feel that different sitting in the driver seat. By that I mean all the usual controls are where you expect them to be so it doesn’t feel like you’ve climbed into the future. For me that’s a plus, as I feel it’s important to get comfortable quickly in a new vehicle.
So the next important question – how does it go with the all electric motor?
Well, the vehicle has 3 different driving modes – Eco, Normal and Sport. I found that the Normal mode was more appropriate for city driving as the acceleration was more responsive when you needed it. Eco would be just fine for highway travel and will help you get more Km out of a charge while and Sport mode would be useful for hilly roads or extra zip but at the cost of less Km per charge.
So how far did I get with a promised range of 330km?
Well it was no problem to drive around for a couple of days in Melbourne without topping up the battery, but I did find that when the estimated travel distance left dropped to around 68km, the vehicle was quick to warn me to make charging up the vehicle a priority.
It did kind of remind me of phone phone battery FOMO than many people get when their smartphone hits 20 percent and a recharge suddenly becomes top priority. Fortunately there are plenty of public EV charging points around Melbourne so a recharge was never far away. Naturally if you owned an EV, it’s going to be more convenient to plug in to charge at home, and the vehicle does some with an adapter to let you do that from a started wall power socket (or you can buy a special home charging station).
Bottom line – Why would you buy this EV?
If you’re keen to be more ‘green’ and cut your fuel costs down, then moving to an electric vehicle is on your agenda (sooner rather than later) then the MG ZS EV presents as a great opportunity to do it without paying the higher upfront cost of many other Electric Vehicles on the market. This is a great ‘everyday’ car and as the public charging networks improve and expand you could look at taking it further from home.
