MG has announced that the HS plug-in hybrid is on sale now, priced from £29,995. That sounds like a lot for an MG, right, but in fact it’s one of the cheapest plug-in hybrid large SUVs on the market. The Peugeot 3008 plug-in hybrid has a £37,000 list price, and the MG here is a little more spacious than that. You can get a top-of-the-line HS plug-in for £32,000 too, which comes with the kitchen sink. We’ll get to that in a minute.
**spoiler alert** It’s not a literal kitchen sink.
So, some stats. The HS here gets MG’s all-new plug-in hybrid drivetrain, which on paper at least is very impressive. It mates a 1.5-litre four-cylinder petrol engine to a 90kW electric motor powered by a 16.6kW battery pack. It has two gearboxes, one a six-speed auto handling the petrol engine and the other a four-speed unit for the electric motor.
The total output is 254bhp with 370Nm, which is good for a surprisingly rapid 6.9-second 0-62mph time and a 118mph top speed, for what that’s worth. Most importantly though, its electric-only range is 43 miles, which should be good enough to see to the whole commute for most, while its official mpg rating is a sky high 155.8mpg with 43g/km CO2. That’s a proper WLTP rating too, not an old NEDC one designed to confuse. It’ll charge to full from a 7kW wallbox in under three hours.
Two trim levels, the £30k one called Excite and coming with auto headlamps, 18-inch alloys, a 10-inch LED infotainment touchscreen, parking sensors and LED daytime running lights. The aforementioned £32,000 version adds proper LED headlamps, dancing indicators (like the ones you see on an Audi), a panoramic glass roof and a powered tailgate. In short, both have lots of stuff and the top level one is positively luxurious, on paper at least.
It’s on sale now.
Keyword: MG HS plug-in hybrid on sale from £30k