2024 MG4 Essence 64: this Chinese electric vehicle changes everything | Opinion

In my “working” life (people get very angry when I call driving new cars work), there are a very few “this changes everything” moments, but I just had one when testing the alarmingly good, and relatively cheap, MG4. 

Years ago, I remember driving my first ever EV, a Mitsubishi WhywhywhyMiEV I think it was called, and hating it enormously. I recall thinking that if this was the future it was time to change careers and start reviewing something more interesting, like economy-class seats, or cardboard cartons.

I also recall being relieved beyond measure, however, when I drove the first electric vehicle from Porsche, the Taycan, because, while is too heavy and bargey to be a proper sports car, it was at least hilariously fast, deeply involving and imbued with properly fabulous steering.

Other moments of import include my first ever drive in a Subaru WRX, which was basically the first car I ever thought was exciting enough to give a damn about, my first ever 911, and driving the then-new Ferrari 488 out of the factory in Modena and into the Italian hills for a day of unparalleled joy (it was also the first day I ever enjoyed a cup of coffee, so there really was magic in the air).

It’s fair to say I did not expect driving the MG4 Essence 64, a $47,990 EV with a range of 435km (the entry-level Excite, which has a 51kWh battery and 350km of range, is a quite incredible $38,990) to be a revelatory day. Indeed, as cynicism is my default setting, I expected to get out of it and start writing some truly mean and horrible things about my colleagues at carsales.com who, in their wisdom, declared this to be their Car of the Year for 2023.

Madness, I thought. I did hold out some hope that they hadn’t lost their marbles, firstly because Bruce Newton works there, and he’s nobody’s fool (and a cherished EV Central alumni) and secondly because another admired, and almost impossibly handsome, EV Central colleague, Andrew Chesterton, had also raved to me about how good the MG4 was.

Now, the reason I had doubts was not just because every single cheap Chinese car I’ve driven so far has been either absolutely appalling, or worse than that, but because I’d driven a few MGs before, and not enjoyed them either.

Yes, it makes sense to me that Chinese cars are going through the same slow and painful process of getting up to speed that the Japanese went through last century, and then the Koreans did after them. But I do recall how long that took, so I was pretty sure it was going to be a good decade, or at least five years, before China would produce a car you’d actually think about spending your own money on.

I’d also seen the MG4, lots of them in fact, on the road, and deduced that the designers were desperately trying to produce something eye-catching but also something that looked a bit like a Toyota Prius. This is like making a movie that combines The Terminator with The Notebook, and the result is unsurprisingly a little all over the place. It’s not ugly, the MG4, but it sure ain’t pretty, either.

My test car was also the kind of orange you’d get if the devil vomited lava, and it had some kind of weird-ass lighting features on the rear wing that resembled one of those garish light-up keyboards that sad little gamers use to watch porn. Sorry, play video games.

My first impressions of the interior were a lot more positive; I liked the futuristic sawn-off steering wheel that everyone is going for these days (there’s a bit of BMW iX about it), and there was plenty of room. While the touchpoint and plastics didn’t feel premium, they didn’t feel anywhere near as temporary as those in other Chinese cars. Mind you, they still don’t feel like what you’d expect from a $48k car, either, but once you take away the usual EV-impost of battery cost, this is really a $25k car, which makes it more reasonable. 

And then I went for a drive, and another drive. And then I really did think, well, this changes everything. Not only because it’s an affordable (relatively) EV that is actually fun to drive, and not only because the ride, handling, steering and rear-wheel-drive fun factor are all so noticeably impressive, but because this is a Chinese car, an MG, and it is such a huge, quantum leap from where all of its relatives have been before. 

In short, the Chinese have reached near parity with some of their competitors in almost alarmingly quick time. Or at least they have with this car, which means that surely the rest of them will catch up soon.

It also means I should apologise to carsales.com and all of the fine people who sail her for doubting them so severely, and to Andrew for telling him he’d clearly lost his mind. 

And to you, dear reader, I would say that if you think you need to spend $60k-plus on a Tesla to gain entry to EV world, you really should have a drive of one of these first.