Australian MG4 Excite 51, real owners review after 1 month - the good and the bad!

After 1 month of ownership of the MG4 Excite 51, here's 5 good things and 5 bad things. Please comment if I missed anything, or if there's any other content you would find helpful.

The Good
00:00 Intro
00:13 Exterior Design
01:39 Interior design
3:15 Price
4:52 Driving dynamics
5:33 7 Year Warranty

The Bad
6:42 No frunk
7:25 The Cave
8:41 No OTA and settings don't save
10:25 Base model missing some safety features
11:25 High servicing costs

12:52 Conclusion

[brendacheers]

I've been driving mine for nearly three weeks and thoroughly agree with your review.

[corindikevcorindikev]

All of your points are valid. I've owned my Essence 64 for just under 2 months & 3000km of driving. The extra 10k is well worth it in my opinion as there are many extra features as well as more power, bigger battery, & tyres, 2 level boot, active grill shutter, aero spoilers, privacy glass, better & heated seats, power drivers seat, 360 camera, folding mirrors, auto dimming mirror, & a bunch of other things including the upgraded 6 speaker audio. It laso has voice control that actually works well. A simple software update to save your settings say in custom mode would be great. LKA can be a bit of a pain but it does train you to drive accurately. OPD is great, I use it all the time. OTA updates should be possible & may happen in the future. Trip planning & charger routing is apparently coming shortly & is supposed to be an OTA ugrade to the Satnav.

I replaced the incandescent bulbs in the interior light with 2 x 200 lumen LEDs & they cost only $7.00. Now I can see everything at night, even in the back. I don't have a problem with the headrests. Mine are all there & sit right down on the backrest. They impede the view a bit but I can still see everything out the back fine. On mine there are 2 small pockets and a large map pocket on the rear of each front seat. I don't care about the lack of armrest or bottle holder as there will hardly ever be anyone in the back anyway. I assume it is all to do with keeping costs down to meet the sale price.

Overall it is avery good car with one of the best dynamic driving experiences I have encountered. 8/10 is about right. I might even go .5 higher but fix the niggles and it would be a great car, 9.5. 😀

[fishingwiththomas]

Good review. I've done about 1300kms in my 64 Essence now and love it. Just this morning I have discovered I can select the custom drive mode and turn opd on and, fingerscrossed it keeps staying on.

[fredfrond]

Nice review from the owner and drivers standpoint . Looking forward to another one after 12 months.

[glennmoloney]

Yes I agree with your points as well. Looking for a car for my wife and really like the MG4 for the handling but she wants the extra safety features with the LFP battery which you can't get... In Thailand they do have the 51 essence which would have been ideal.

[leeebbrell]

I have i4, love it, my wife is looking at mg 4, this video is really useful, thanks... im trying to convince her EVs are ok not as problematic as media says

[passivehouseaustralia]

In Australia Law, any qualified mechanic can do a ""BOOK SERVICE" and it is not allowed to invalidate your warrantee... I think there might be an opening here for someone! Also in the Australia Constitution you are not allowed to "Bill for no service" ACCC should get involved on the $900+ service because I would argue its clearly not in line with the actual work... and seeing Telsa have no requirement for servicing at all it will probably get traction...

[marcjost]

Nice, I finally got to sit in the MG4, huge leg room for a tall person like me, was stunned how great and lux the interior felt, going to test drive one soon

[AMLagonda]

This is a great review, cheers, glad you like the MG as well :)

[billzuber]

Great review! Really helpful, thanks 🙏

[frplzff]

I agree with you regarding the servicing costs. The only thing of note is it does include free onsite raodside support. This is worth about $80 /year . So worth $180 offset per service

[sectokia]

Everyone keeps hoping for an update to save settings, its never going to happen. The regulations require 'profiles' save settings like this, and a profile requires at least 2 'measurements' to differentiate the person who saved the settings from other drivers. Usually this is done with a crude seat weight sensor, and crude infrared face/height sensor. The MG4 has neither, so it cannot do profiles at all. It has to reset all 'safety' systems every drive just in case someone else drives the car.... If you want to change the defaults you can do it with a ODBC programmer.

[MGriff-qi]

We have the Essence 64. I wonder which firmware version you have? Our firmware seems to have smoothed out some of the concerns you mention. I gather the update for the Excite is different in some ways. We do not use one pedal driving often as the custom setting for drive mode we have set up is good enough. The resetting of other features is definitely something we would love to see changed too. We have decided to store the centre rear headrest in the boot. We are most unlikely to carry 5 people in the car but when we do we will put it back for that trip.
While we have a lot of likes our Essence top 5 dislikes are:
1. The radio is Digital and we are just close enough to the edge of coverage that the digital stations often serve up missing words in a so you hear part of the . This means using Apple car play (or Android) This is wired so you need to get this going before you leave the driveway. It often takes 2 goes to connect. Once done it works great even if you get out and go shopping etc. It would be nice if it was not a plug in. It only works on the USB A plug side which seems strange.
2. The missing Frunk. Even a small one as a place to store the supplied trickle charge cable bag.
3. Electric seat adjustment is only on the drivers seat.
4. No automatic wipers even at this price point seems a bit of an oversight. The area behind the rear vision mirror is used for driving safety features I believe, so it may not be easy to set up another sensor there.
5. The limited set of shortcut buttons, including an ON/OFF button. Even just an OFF button would be nice. If you arrive somewhere and are sitting there and need to wait for a bit, getting it to turn off is fiddly.

I don’t think I agree about servicing costs but I am a little curious. It is after all a vehicle with a huge lithium battery. If they believe they need to replace some battery cells or completely replace battery cooling stuff every 2 years, then the cost may be reasonable. It seems most unlikely that they are simply seeing it as an opportunity to charge for unnecessary stuff. If that were true why would the 2 year service not be higher?

[dondiezel]

My MG4 lux (Philippines) is almost a month old now and I agree with this review. I want to add that the MG ismart app and all its functionalities aren't available in the Philippines (digital key, remote AC controls, etc). Wireless Android auto/carplay could've been made available as well.

I've seen 3D printed frunks now available in Europe (after market).

[peterengland]

100% agree with your good and bad points.

[johncrispin]

Thanks Stuart, a perfect summation and agree on all the point a you made. Interesting was your first service bill . Mine was £62 ?? This was after making the appointment
For the service and being told it was £162. When queried as to what was done for that price the very polite lady on the phone said oil change and filters and as soon as she said that I
Mentioned that the MG4 is an ev . Not sure she got that at first but then the price came down as above. Good enough but oh dear … staff don’t know much sadly along with the rest of the world In regard to evs!
Could I ask again what device is necessary to play music and from which storage media you recommended a while ago, thanks

[isaacplans]

Very good review. I have an MG4 and agree on all the points

[JohnoEx]

Thanks for this review, I test drove the MG4 last week and enjoyed it, it was my first ever EV drive. One pedal worked great.. agree about the servicing cost $907 every 4 yrs is too much, I don't mind the $290 odd every 2 yrs that's much more reasonable. Also I wish they add OTA like you said and ability to save settings. Just wondering if you have called MG about the phantom breaking? Would be good to know if they are aware of the issue and are working on an update.

Are you planning to do the LED bulb swap? I saw some videos about how the cabin lights are halogens and many people from UK are swapping them for LED. Interested if there is an aftermarket rear seat light that we can add too.

[selgeaus]

Another minor negative is the max charging power it can take

[okbilly]

still deciding if i should buy the MG4, can you charge on a regular power point, how long would it take from empty? as i am trying to decide if i should save & buy a 2nd hand prius (hybrid)?