Our take on MG ZS EV!

Recently, we had a MG ZS EV at Man&Machine. A client of ours was planning to buy one and wanted our opinion about this sub-compact electric SUV. Since we'd never driven one of these cars before, he arranged for the demo vehicle to arrive at our shop. Not only did we get a chance to drive such a car for the first time, we also had a chance to put it on our shop lift and look underneath, thanks to the patience of the sales team. Here's our take on one of the early movers in the EV space in our country:

Exterior: Doesn't stand out as weird or awkward. Looks like a regular CUV.

Interior: Quite functional, although we didn't spend much time inside the car. Looks and feels European.

Drive: Driving an EV is a different experience, and not entirely in a bad way. Regenerative brakes do the majority of the braking, which means you don't have to use brakes very often. To adjust the regen braking in the ZS, there is a toggle switch on the center console and brake by throttle in maximum regen mode is not as super aggressive as we thought it might be.

It's also worth mentioning that EVs don't have conventional multi-ratio gearboxes, which makes the whole transmission experience smooth and refined. ZS is no exception to this. We also think MG did a decent job in insulating the road noises.

According to the sales team, ZS gives a real-world range of 300km on a single charge and 8 hours to do a full charge with a wall-box charger.

Back in the shop: Underneath the ZS, we noticed a softly sprung McPherson struts sourced from Sachs, a German brand that offers high quality shocks to a plethora of European cars. Lower control arms are stamped steel with easily serviceable ball joints setup. In the rear, MG has taken a more back-to-the-basics approach and chosen a torsion beam instead of multi-link rear suspension. As much as we love the simplicity and low maintenance of a torsion beam set-up, this CUV deserves a multi-link rear, especially at this price point.

Overall, we think MG ZS is a pretty decent EV to daily drive. It has a good fun-to-drive factor, which is sadly declining in most 4-cylinder internal combustion counterparts. The calming effect of an EV is just icing on the cake. Let us know your take on the EVs and your EV experiences.

Side note: No, we're not scared of EVs throwing us out of business. They might not have as many moving parts as their ICE counterparts, but they still have a lot of serviceable components like suspension, brakes, cooling, etc. Now, only time will tell whether EVs will become mainstream or just a stop gap before fuel cell cars are mass produced.