2022 MG HS PHEV (inc. 0-100) review. The best affordable plug-in hybrid SUV?

CarExpert

This is Australia's cheapest plug-in hybrid SUV! But...is it any good? Paul Maric investigates! It's the 2022 MG HS Plus EV Excite (it's a bit of a mouthful!) and it can be driven on full electric mode, as a hybrid or just in petrol mode.  Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE  More MG content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/mg More MS HG content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/mg/hs  Skip Ahead: Intro: 00:00 Exterior 1:02 Interior 3:31 Infotainment 4:52 Safety tech 5:52 Practicality 6:30 Charging 10:16 On the road 10:56 0-100km/h 16:06 Verdict 17:23  We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.  Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.  Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1  You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.  Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!  Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!  CarExpert: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarExpertAus Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au  Paul Maric: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaric Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric  #mg #hs #review

Transcript

00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. You're looking at the most affordable plug-in hybrid SUV in Australia.

00:05 It's called the MG HS Plus EV Excite. Now, Plus EV is their term. They want to kind of

00:12 differentiate this plug-in hybrid from a parallel hybrid like a RAV4, for example. This competes

00:18 with things like the Mitsubishi Outlander plug-in hybrid, and also the Ford Escape plug-in

00:23 hybrid. We really don't have too many options in Australia when it comes to plug-in hybrids

00:27 at the moment, but it is good to see more and more of them are starting to appear. Now,

00:32 this is priced at just under $47,000 drive away, so it is pretty good value for money

00:37 when you consider exactly what you're getting here and the technology that they've been

00:40 able to cram into this. Today, we're going to do a detailed review of this car, so if

00:44 you do want to skip ahead to other parts of this review, you can use the time codes on

00:48 the screen, or if you're on YouTube, you can scroll down and use the chapters below, and

00:52 if you haven't done so already, I'd love it if you could subscribe to our channel and

00:55 press the bell icon, because that's going to tell you every single time we review a

00:59 plug-in hybrid SUV.

01:02 Let's talk designs. You've got five exterior colours to pick from. All But Blue is an extra

01:08 $700. So, on the design front, look, this is all pretty straightforward. The HS has

01:13 been out for a little while now, so look, to me, the styling is starting to get a little

01:17 bit dated, but I guess they're doing what they can before an all-new model gets revealed.

01:21 Down the front here, you've got this 3D-looking grille. It kind of goes inwards and comes

01:26 out a little bit, and then that MG logo protrudes from the front there. So, pretty cool-looking

01:31 design, and I think that just a bit of style in this segment isn't such a bad thing. Chroma

01:36 around the outside there, and then you have a radar down the bottom.

01:39 Over here with the headlights, have a look at this. I've not seen halogen headlights

01:43 for quite some time, and there is a reason for that. They really are not very good headlights,

01:48 and you can have a look at our headlight comparison by clicking up here, where we take you through

01:52 the differences between halogen headlights and different headlight technology available.

01:56 You can get a more expensive version of this car that actually has LED headlights, so if

02:01 lighting is important to you, you're doing a lot of country driving, I'd probably go

02:03 for the next model up, but you do get these LED lights surrounding that halogen headlight

02:09 there. No fog lights either.

02:10 Now, around the side here, you've got a set of 17-inch alloy wheels on a 60 profile tyre.

02:16 This should mean that this actually rides really nicely, given that it has so much rubber

02:20 there on the sidewall. The wheel design's pretty straightforward. You've got that machine

02:24 cut finish on the outside, and then a bit of graphite there on the inside. Up the top

02:28 here, you have some plastic cladding on the wheel arches there. This is front-wheel drive

02:33 only, so you're not going to be doing any off-road driving. In fact, the ground clearance

02:36 is circa 170mm, so it really isn't too suitable for off-road driving, but it does sit a little

02:41 bit higher, so getting in and out of it is a little bit easier.

02:45 Up the top, you have body colour up the top there, indicator built into the wing mirror,

02:48 and then a black section down the bottom. More of that chrome garnish runs down the

02:52 side of the car there, along with on top of these door handles, roof rails, and then come

02:57 around to the back.

02:58 Now, around the back here, you've got a shark fin aerial up the top there, brake light in

03:03 this rear spoiler housing. You've got the MG logo, HSPHEV, which stands for Plug-In Hybrid

03:10 Electric Vehicle, an LED element here in the taillights, dual exhaust pipes, and then this

03:16 sort of matte black finish down the bottom with that diffuser section.

03:20 So look, I think the car actually still looks good. It is just starting to look a little

03:24 bit dated, so let me know what you reckon in the comments section below. Do you think

03:27 this needs a bit of a refresh, or do you reckon they are on the money in terms of the way

03:30 that it looks?

03:31 So we're inside the HS. We'll start with the key. You've got lock, boot, unlock, then on

03:37 the back, MG with a bit of red garnish around the side there, a little bit of chrome as

03:42 well. This is a proximity sensing key, so you can leave that in your pocket. Then when

03:45 you're ready to roll, you have a push button start up the top here.

03:49 So let's talk about the design. Look, I think on face value, this actually looks fine. It's

03:54 sort of nothing amazing, but I think when you compare it to some of the other vehicles

03:57 in this segment, it actually looks a little bit premium. You've got the big screen up

04:00 the top there, soft touch materials along the dashboard there, minimal use of piano

04:06 black. There is a bit sort of around here, around here and here, but for the most part,

04:09 that looks perfectly fine. There are some blank buttons though, and because this is

04:14 the entry level model, they've kind of stripped it back of pretty much all of the features

04:18 you get in the upper spec version.

04:20 Now what about your touch points? So that's pretty firm there, not too bad on the door

04:26 there. How soft are they? Well, we've got our durometer, we've tested the main surfaces

04:31 in this cabin. So if you want to see how this car compares to others that we've tested

04:34 before, look at the link in the description. What about your build quality? Let's give

04:39 this a shot. Well, that's pretty loose in the centre there. Not too bad up the top here

04:44 and then door test. Doesn't sound too bad.

04:52 Moving on to infotainment. So you've got a 10.1 inch infotainment system. It looks fancy,

04:57 but it's not that great. So you can drive it as a touchscreen, but you do have shortcut

05:03 buttons down the bottom here. I'll run you through the basics. So you have a six speaker

05:06 sound system, AM and FM radio, no digital radio, unfortunately. And then you also have

05:12 satellite navigation built in. It's a third party system. Kind of works okay, but it's

05:18 just a little bit laggy at times and takes a while to start up first time around. You

05:23 do get smartphone mirroring though, so you get both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Both

05:27 of those are wired systems. So you can see there, it's pretty sort of snappy in terms

05:32 of the way that it works. No dramas at all. Let's have a look at what Android Auto looks

05:37 like. So again, full screen integration and not too bad there in terms of the speed as

05:43 well.

05:44 Ahead of the driver is another digital display. So this shows you speed, trip computer and

05:48 also information about the charge status. Run you through that when we do go for a bit

05:51 of a drive. So how do you go in terms of safety technology? Well, you've got autonomous emergency

05:56 braking with forward collision warning. You've got an auto dimming rear vision mirror, lane

06:01 departure warning and a lane keeping assistant. You've got radar cruise control, rear cross

06:06 traffic alert, which is an important technology, blind spot monitoring with this little light

06:10 down here. On the parking front, you've got rear parking sensors and a reverse view camera.

06:15 I'll show you what that looks like. There you go. Quality, and that's actually pretty

06:20 good. I can see our suitcase there. Guidelines move with the steering wheel. You even get

06:24 a readout in terms of your distance from the object too. So pretty impressive there in

06:29 terms of parking.

06:30 Let's chat about your practicality and we'll start off with your phone connectivity. So

06:34 no wireless phone charging, unfortunately, but you do have two USB A ports down the front

06:38 here and a 12 volt outlet. On phone storage, you've got a few little spots where you can

06:43 hide it, which is great. I reckon this is a bit of wasted space though. You've got that

06:47 cover and then you can't really do anything down there. So missed opportunity. On our

06:52 drinks, coffee cup fits in there, but it kind of gets lost in there. So you need to prop

06:56 it up a little bit to prevent it from getting de-lidded. Bottle fits in fine. This center

07:02 divider actually moves. So if you do want to give yourself a little bit more room or

07:06 adjust that layout, it's got some teeth in there to allow you to do that. Bottle can

07:11 go inside the door as well without any problems. Let's try our big bottle. See if it fits inside

07:16 the door. Yeah, it does. Fantastic. Plenty of storage there. Just next to the driver's

07:21 knee, you've got a storage slot for keys and coins and other sort of bits and pieces. This

07:26 moves forwards and backwards. You've got storage in here as well. Plus it's air conditioned,

07:31 which is kind of nice. Glove box, let's have a look at that. That's pretty reasonably sized

07:35 too. That's not too bad. And finally you have a sunglasses holder up the top. Moving on

07:39 to your comfort. So you have dual zone automatic climate control. You've got headed seats for

07:45 the front row. Seats, they're pretty comfortable. It's a faux leather type arrangement, but

07:51 they kind of hug you in nicely. They're fine for longer distance drives. Seat adjustment

07:55 comes in the form of electric for drivers. You can go forwards, backwards, backrest can

08:00 go forwards, backwards, and then you have manual lumbar adjustment. Your passenger seat

08:04 is entirely manually adjustable. Steering wheel offers both tilt and reach adjustment.

08:10 And then on our reach test, all of this stuff is easy to reach while you're driving. So

08:14 second row of the HS, knee room is pretty reasonable. Toe room is good as well. Headroom

08:20 is excellent. So pretty impressed with the space back here. It's actually quite sort

08:24 of roomy when you look at it in the grand scheme of things. Other creature comforts,

08:28 you have mat pockets in the back of the seats, air vents. You've got two USB-A outlets down

08:33 the bottom, two ISOFIX points on the outboard seats with three top tether points, a center

08:39 armrest here with two cup holders. Try that out. That works a charm. You've got teeth

08:45 in there to hold everything in place. And then there's a little storage nook in there

08:49 as well. Some fancy brushed aluminium storage inside the doors. Yep, enough for a bottle

08:56 there. Now, our window test. Here it goes. Will it go all the way down? Yes, it does.

09:04 Fantastic. And final thing I'm going to show you is you can actually recline these seats

09:09 if you do want to give yourself a bit of extra room for a kip. Moving on to cargo space,

09:15 pop this open. So manual tailgate. In its standard trim here, you have just over 450

09:20 litres of cargo space available. Beneath the cargo floor here, you've got a number of items.

09:25 So you've got a space for your charging device. You've got a tyre repair kit because there

09:30 is no spare tyre. You've got a tank manhole. I don't know exactly what that is. Let me

09:37 know if you know in the comments section below. I know I'm meant to be the car expert, but

09:41 I'm not entirely sure what a tank manhole is. Cooling for your hybrid system. And then

09:46 you also have the 12 volt battery. Let's have a look at what it looks like with our bags

09:51 in there. So there's the laptop bag. Our suitcase in as well. Look at that. It's a pretty decent

09:57 sized boot. I am impressed by that. Got a cargo blind there as well that you can get

10:02 out of the way if you need to. But if you do want to expand this space, you can drop

10:06 the second row pretty easily just by flicking these levers, giving that a push. And that

10:11 exposes you to just over 1250 litres of space with a fairly flat floor as well.

10:16 Now before we go for a spin, let's talk about your EV portion of this plug-in hybrid. So

10:21 you can only charge it with AC, single phase and only at around 3.6 kilowatts. So not very

10:30 impressive in terms of how quick you can charge it. Given the battery is almost a 17 kilowatt

10:35 hour battery, that's going to be something like a five hour charge. So yeah, not that

10:39 impressed with this setup. You have to keep in mind that some vehicles in this segment

10:42 like the Eclipse Cross PHE, they offer vehicle to grid. So yeah, this type of arrangement

10:48 really needs to be a whole lot better. I think the Eclipse Cross even does DC charging as

10:52 well. So yeah, they need to definitely improve on that.

10:56 We've just hit the road in the HS. Now let me run you through this engine and electric

11:06 combo because it's actually pretty interesting. So the internal combustion engine is a 1.5

11:11 litre turbocharged four cylinder petrol. It on its own makes 119 kilowatts of power and

11:17 250 newton metres of torque. So that figure isn't actually too bad just as it sits, but

11:22 then it's mated to an electric motor and that electric motor makes 90 kilowatts of power

11:27 and 230 newton metres of torque. When they work combined, that produces a combined output

11:32 of 189 kilowatts of power and 370 newton metres of torque. Now I've just thrown a whole bunch

11:39 of numbers there at you, but what that basically means is you actually have a decent internal

11:44 combustion engine to begin with. Often what they'll do with these plug in hybrids is fit

11:47 the world's smallest internal combustion engine to improve fuel economy and then made it with

11:52 an electric motor, which ultimately doesn't really serve you all that well when you run

11:56 out of battery. So this is the compromise they struck.

11:59 Now in terms of the battery, so I mentioned earlier that it's around that 17 kilowatt

12:03 hour mark and that means you get about 60-ish kilometres worth of driving just on pure electric

12:08 range. Unlike other competitors in this segment, you can't really do a whole lot in terms of

12:13 configuring the battery. So you can't make it hold charge, you can't really make it do

12:17 a great deal. You can though go to your driving settings here and there's a battery level

12:23 control and basically you can flick that between medium and high and I guess that tries to

12:29 charge the battery a little more, but it doesn't seem to be doing a whole lot as you flick

12:32 through those different menus. Other brands will allow you to use the internal combustion

12:36 engine to charge the battery or alternatively just run it on an internal combustion engine

12:40 if you want. There is a dedicated EV mode, so by pushing

12:43 this button here it goes into EV only. Now this is fascinating because it is really punchy

12:49 in EV mode, so if I put that flat to the board there, it won't kick the internal combustion

12:55 engine on, it just stays in EV mode. So it's not the world's punchiest motor but it does

12:59 push you in the back and get things moving along nicely and it means that you can just

13:03 drive on EV if you want to. The other interesting component to this whole

13:10 combination is the transmission. So it uses six forward gears for the internal combustion

13:16 engine and then four gears for the electric motor. So it's always doing something in the

13:21 background there and it doesn't feel, you don't really notice it shifting gears. With

13:26 some of these EVs that use set gears you do notice the gear shifts. Here it is incredibly

13:30 seamless and I think the way that they've set this up suits this combination nicely.

13:35 And then when you are sick of just tootling along here, if you do punch it, what does

13:38 it feel like? It's not too bad. So again it's not mind-numbingly quick but it's more than

13:46 adequate and it gives you a nice little shunt in the back. The screen here ahead of the

13:49 driver gives you an idea of what the system is doing in terms of the internal combustion

13:52 engine, whether it's charging the battery or just running on EV alone.

13:56 Now let's talk about ride. Often with Chinese cars that haven't been tuned for the Australian

14:00 market they perform not that great over our sine wave here which will hit maximum legal

14:06 speed in Australia which is 130. Let's see what it feels like. Oh wow. Oh that is not

14:14 great. That is really average. So yeah, lack of body control there and it just sits up

14:20 in the air for way too long. So look, there is some merit to actually tuning cars in Australia

14:26 and it means that when they do arrive here and you do go out for a drive in the country

14:30 and you do hit a set of those consecutive sine waves, it's not going to buck you about

14:34 like it just did there.

14:38 Now what's it like if you want to have a little bit of fun? There is no sport mode but we'll

14:43 lob it through our corner here and see how it feels. Yeah look there's a fair bit of

14:49 body roll there but it's actually not terrible. If you do stay stuck into it, it has enough

14:59 power there to spin up the inside wheels so it is engaging in that sense so yeah it's

15:05 not going to be the most boring car in the world if you do want to chuck it through a

15:07 couple of corners.

15:13 What about your fuel economy? So one of the big benefits of a plug-in hybrid is that if

15:16 you do drive it on just electric you're not going to use a drop of fuel but if you do

15:21 I guess drive a combination of those you're going to have a little bit of fuel use. The

15:24 official figure is 1.7 litres per 100km which is a pretty low number. Let's have a look

15:30 at how it's currently performing. It's currently sitting on 7.1 litres per 100km so that's

15:37 significantly higher than the official claim. It is worth keeping in mind that we have been

15:42 doing highway driving to get here and it didn't, it left with a full battery but it didn't

15:46 seem to use much of that battery on the drive here so it is interesting that perhaps it

15:50 only uses the EV portion of this when you're driving in and around the city and that is

15:55 the most efficient way to be doing it. But yeah I'd be interested to see over the long

15:59 term whether that economy figure does come down. This car only has 200km on the clock

16:03 but I think it should be doing better than 7 litres per 100km. Now MG claims a 0-100

16:08 time of just under 7 seconds. We'll put it up against our stopwatch and this is how it went.

16:28 How quiet is it inside the cabin? It's actually not too bad. When you're driving along here

16:32 at sort of country road speeds on a coarse chip surface there isn't a great deal of noise

16:37 that comes into the cabin and of course that whole hybrid drivetrain is nice and quiet

16:41 even when the internal combustion engine is running so that's not too bad at all.

16:45 What's your visibility like? So it is a reasonably sized SUV but I can clearly see down the front

16:50 of the car there. The wing mirrors are nice and big, I've got a blind spot monitor built

16:53 into those. Visibility out the rear is not too bad, it's a narrow envelope but I can

16:58 see far enough out there. I did notice though with the reverse camera when it is on it kind

17:03 of points to the ground, you don't get much vision down the road so it would be nice if

17:07 they could elevate that up a little bit so you can actually see further down the road.

17:11 Now you're probably not going to be doing any towing in this but if you do, 1500kg is

17:15 your braked towing capacity and then in addition to that this requires 95rpm premium unleaded fuel.

17:21 So the MG HS, the plug-in hybrid, what do we think? I'm kind of in two minds about this

17:32 because it's actually not too bad to drive. The gearbox and the hybrid components actually

17:37 work quite well together, it's very smooth, it's got plenty of punch as well and if you

17:42 do want to do your EV driving you just press a button and you can just drive it on EV.

17:46 I'm concerned a bit though about the consumption, I think we need to do a much longer drive

17:49 to get an idea of what the consumption is like and perhaps what we'll do when this video

17:53 goes live I'll pin a comment down the bottom that lets you know what our average was for

17:57 the week that we had with the car to let you know if it is a little bit better than what

18:00 it was when we tested it today. I just think it falls behind some of the competition in

18:04 terms of the features that you get with the plug-in hybrid system. So none of that vehicle

18:09 to load or vehicle to grid setup, you can't do any DC charging and you can only charge

18:13 at AC at up to 3.6kW so it's not really all that impressive from other plug-in hybrids

18:19 on the market. So yeah, it is affordable and it does sort of tick the boxes for being an

18:23 EV and a plug-in hybrid but I just don't think it is the best one on the market. So let me

18:28 know in the comments section below what do you think about this, have you driven this?

18:31 Did you buy one? What else were you cross-shopping? I'm keen to find out and if you did enjoy

18:35 this video please make sure you like it and share it with your mates and if you haven't

18:39 done so already, subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon but until next time,

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