FOUR THE FUTURE (some text hidden) --NONE--

By Jonathan Crouch

MG's core EV, the compact MG4 EV, has been usefully improved. Jonathan Crouch takes a look.

Ten Second Reviewword count: 58

The MG4 EV redefined what an all-electric MG should be. As part of this significant update, the car's smarter inside and out; and prioritises longer-ranging batteries. And remains good to drive, affordable and well equipped. As a result, it should still be on your wish list if you're looking for a small value-based electric hatch of this kind.

Backgroundword count: 196

Today, MG is amongst the EV segment market leaders, but that's a relatively recent phenomenon. This Anglo-Chinese brand's rise to electric prominence only really got started back in 2022 with this car, the MG4 EV, here usefully improved. Prior to this model's original arrival, we'd had electric MGs (the ZS EV and the MG5 EV) but they'd been designs based on combustion underpinnings. The MG4 was the company's first purpose-built EV, an angular small electric hatch that was far better than anyone expected it to be and regularly occupied a place in Britain's top five best EV sellers thereafter. By late 2025 though, sales were slowing as the supermini-segment EV competition ramped up, not helped by the government's refusal to incentivise sales of this car in the way they were doing with some rivals. Hence the need for the upgraded MG4 we look at here. It's slightly more expensive than before and now only comes with longer-range batteries, in both cases because a separate model, the MG4 EV Urban (with its cheaper price tag and smaller battery) has been introduced to slot in beneath mainstream MG4 models in the company's line-up. Let's take a closer look.

Driving Experienceword count: 273

The mainstream MG4 EV line-up continues to be based on the brand's Modular Scalable Platform and now offers a choice of two batteries - a lithium-ion-phosphate 64kWh Long Range pack or a nickel-cobalt-manganese 77kWh Extended Range pack. The Long Range version has a little less power than it used to have (down from 201bhp to 187bhp), but 0-62mph is still dispatched quite eagerly, in 7.5s. If you want to go further than the 280 miles of range promised by the 64kWh battery, the Extended Range 77kWh variant promises up to 329 miles from a charge and offers a gutsier 241bhp motor which reduces the 0-62mph time to 6.2s. Both these derivatives use a single rear-mounted motor. As before, at the top of the line-up sits a twin motor XPower model which sticks with the 64kWh battery but pairs it with dual motors together producing 429bhp. With this, 0-62mph takes just 3.8s but range is limited to 251 miles. As before, all MG4s offer four regenerative braking levels - low, medium, high and an 'adaptive' mode which uses the car's sensors to determine the right level of deceleration for any given traffic scenario. There are five driving modes (Eco, Normal, Sport, Snow and Custom); and two braking settings too - Normal and Sport. One of the surprising things about this car in its original form was just how good it was to drive and not much has changed in that regard as part of this update. Along with near-perfect 50:50 weight distribution, the rear-driven format helps with that of course - and facilitates an impressively tight town turning circle of just 2.8 turns lock-to-lock.

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