What’s it like?
The MG4 hatchback might not have been the first electric vehicle (EV) from this manufacturer, arriving in 2022 after the likes of the ZS EV SUV and MG5 estate, but it was the first car on the company’s scalable platform – and it won critical acclaim when it arrived. It’s a sweet-to-drive, spacious and decently long-legged EV, offering a choice of battery packs and power outputs for a consumer to choose from. A value rival to the likes of the Cupra Born Peugeot E-308 among more, the MG4 was updated in 2026 – but even the earliest models still make sense as second-hand buys.
Which model to go for?
Originally, the MG4 launched with two single-motor derivatives, and in both instances the electric motor was mounted on the trailing axle for rear-wheel drive. The Standard Range had a 125kW motor and 51kWh battery pack for an official 350km of range, while the Long Range (LR) increased the motor power to 150kW and the battery to 64kWh, increasing the published data to 435-450km (depending on which size wheels were fitted).
Peak power was 170hp on the Standard Range and 204hp for the Long Range, giving a 0-100km/h time of slightly less than eight seconds on both variants because the increased weight of the bigger battery pack on the LR negated its 34hp bump in peak power.
Then, in 2023, MG went bonkers and gave us the XPower derivative. This was a dual-motor take on the MG4 with sportier looks inside and out, and some chassis upgrades to cope with its massive new outputs of 435hp and 600Nm – numbers sizeable enough to bring the 0-100km/h down to a ridiculous 3.8 seconds. But because the MG4 XPower used the same 64kWh battery as the Long Range, its range came down to 385km – and it’ll be a lot less than that in the real world, if you keep regularly enjoying its full performance.
In 2026, the entire family received a modest visual tidying (about the easiest giveaway is that the older two-piece rear spoiler atop the boot became a single-spar item) but the big news is that the MG4 was joined in the manufacturer’s portfolio by the MG4 Urban. Don’t be confused by the latter’s name: it’s not a spin-off of the MG4 itself, but in fact an entirely new model that’s front-wheel drive and aimed at an even more value-conscious section of the market.
Any single-motor, rear-wheel-drive variant of the MG4 is a brilliant EV. We’d recommend at least a Long Range for its increased capabilities, but a Standard Range is still worth checking out, assuming it’s priced correctly. The XPower, meanwhile, is technically intriguing, but despite all its added speed and muscle, it actually doesn’t drive quite as nicely as the RWD cars.
Does anything go wrong?
Not much, and the benefit of being an EV is that there’s potentially less to fail on the MG4 than there would be on a similarly cheap-to-own, combustion-powered hatchback. That said, there have been mutterings from owners about electrical and infotainment issues onboard the MG4, while the supplementary 12-volt electrical system for the ancillaries can often drain that battery, leading to operating issues.
There was an early recall for the MG4, with the potential for a small number of vehicles to suffer a failure that would ‘superlock’ them while in motion, but other than that there are no other recalls on the MG4 family.