A long warranty impresses but safety may not
MG knows it has to persuade customers away from brands with more established reputations and it's offering a seven-year/80,000-mile warranty to help do this. Electric cars should inherently be more reliable than petrol or diesel models because they have far fewer moving parts under the bonnet. We expect MG's electric motor and battery pack will prove tough and resilient.
MG 5 reliability
It’s hard to judge the reliability of the MG 5 until we have owner accounts or it appears in our Driver Power owner satisfaction report. While the petrol- and electric-powered MG ZS came 41st out of the top 75 cars – and scored a top-10 result for value – MG as a brand posted a disastrous result. It came dead last in our run-down of 29 manufacturers, with astonishingly poor reliability (38% of owners reported a fault in the first year of ownership).
However, it’s not known what proportion of owners bought an electric car, which should be more reliable. Customers also complained about the infotainment systems, but the brand-new system in the facelifted MG 5 is much slicker than previous efforts.
Safety
The MG ZS SUV could only manage a three-star Euro NCAP safety rating, and we aren't expecting the 5 EV to do much better. It's fitted with front, side and curtain airbags, an auto-hold handbrake and a tyre pressure monitoring system. However, some of the latest active safety technology isn't present, presumably to keep production costs down. At least autonomous emergency braking is fitted, which will bring you to a stop if it’s triggered below 12mph.
Keyword: MG 5 EV estate - Reliability & safety