MG ZS Hybrid+ Review 2024

If you’re looking to buy a small family SUV, and you want it to provide as much space and as much equipment as possible for the lowest possible price, then yes, the MG ZS is a very good option for you. It’s decent to drive and has pretty good cabin quality, too. It’s not the most polished car of its type by any means, but it does look like very good value for money.

The choice is very simple with the MG ZS. There’s only one hybrid powertrain on offer - at least there is until the middle of 2025 when a petrol-powered non-hybrid will be offered - and two trim level choices. The only optional extra available is exterior paint.

The entry-level SE trim is so well equipped that there’s no need to go for the higher-end Trophy trim if you’re working with a budget, but we can see why most customers make that upgrade, because it does add some very desirable items of kit for a very reasonable cost.

As a small SUV, the MG ZS sits in arguably the most fashionable sector of the car market, so rivals are in plentiful supply. Alternatives available with hybrid power include the Toyota Yaris Cross, Renault Captur, Nissan Juke, Honda HR-V, Hyundai Hona, Kia Niro, Dacia Duster and Lexus LBX, but if you’re not bothered about hybrid power, then the choice gets much wider. Pretty much every manufacturer offers an alternative, if not two or three.

Given the badge and the pricetag, you might well expect the MG ZS to feel rather low-rent on the inside. In reality, though, you might be rather pleasantly surprised. Granted, the plastics do look rather functional in one or two areas, but these are very much the exception rather than the rule, and they’re also very well concealed. Most of the surfaces immediately in your eyeline have an appealing look and feel - the stitched faux-leather finish on top of the dashboard and doors is a particularly nice touch - and they’re just as nice for your fingertips. The assembly perhaps isn’t quite as sturdy or substantial as it is in the very best rivals, but it’s still very convincing and totally acceptable.

Both versions of the MG ZS get precisely the same infotainment system, which centres around a 12.3-inch infotainment screen in the middle of the dashboard. All the functionality you expect is present and correct, including DAB radio, Bluetooth, satellite navigation, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. The stereo system has six speakers as standard, and there are four USB ports in total, including one in the back seats and one in the rearview mirror for powering dashcams.

While MG’s previous efforts in the infotainment department haven’t really been up to much, the ZS’s is a considerable improvement. First of all, it looks much better, with a larger, glossier screen and sharper graphics, and useability have improved thanks to a range of shortcut icons, a useful Home button, and a Home screen that has tiles for various functions through which you can make basic changes to that function without delving into the corresponding submenu. 

It’s not perfect. A few important functions are still buried in the menu structure rather too deeply, and the sensitivity of the screen isn’t what it might be, so you often have to jab the screen a couple of times before your command registers.

The central screen is also accompanied by a 7.0-inch digital instrument screen behind the steering wheel. This can be configured in a number of different layouts, but it’s only the information in the middle of the screen that changes, and it’s information that’s not particularly useful to the driver. All the important information is displayed around the outside of the screen, and it’s smaller than it should be, presumably to make room for the bits that change.

MG refers to the ZS as a B-segment SUV. Run that phrase through the motoring-speak decoder, and it normally means that the car is roughly the same size as a supermini like the Vauxhall Corsa. In truth, however, the MG ZS is considerably bigger than that, with a footprint more like that of an Astra rather than a Corsa. In terms of dimensions, the ZS measures 4,430mm long, 1,818mm wide (not including door mirrors) and 1,635mm tall. The wheelbase (the distance between the front- and rear wheels) is 2,610mm.

That means that there’s a very decent amount of space inside the MG ZS. There’s loads of room up front, as you’d expect, and the rear seats have more than enough headroom and legroom to comfortably accommodate a brace of tall adults. Things will become rather more cramped if you try and add a third member to the back seat crew, because the cabin is a bit narrow for that, and the middle seat of the rear bench is also rather narrow. However, while shoulders and backsides will feel cramped, at least the low transmission tunnel in the floor means that there’s room for everyone’s feet.

Boot space stands at 443 litres, which is actually five litres smaller than in the previous MG ZS. However, that’s actually not too bad when you consider that the new car is packing hybrid technology. Importantly, that volume isn’t too bad by class standards, either. 

Fold the rear seats down (this happens in a 60/40 split, rather than the awkward angle-piece bench you get in the MG3 supermini) and you get 1,457 litres of cargo space. That’s 82 litres more than in the old ZS, and there’s a movable boot floor that helps level off both the load lip and the step up to the folded seatbacks. However, neither is levelled off completely, and those seatbacks lie at a fairly steep angle, leaving you with a significantly sloped load area.

A pure petrol-powered version of the MG ZS will become available in the fullness of time, but initially, the car is only offered as a self-charging hybrid. The hybrid system is the same one used in the MG3 Hybrid+ supermini. It uses a naturally aspirated 1.5-litre petrol engine and an electric motor to deliver a combined 196PS to the front wheels through a three-speed automatic gearbox. As you’d probably expect, it operates in a very similar way to how it does in the smaller MG3, although there are a few interesting differences.

Like with the MG3, the pickup has that eager and unbroken quality you get from an electric car when driving at low-to-moderate speeds, giving a pleasant peppy feel around town. When you’re going faster, or when the battery charge gets too low, the petrol engine chimes in to either charge the battery through the on-board generator, or to drive the wheels, but if you keep your throttle inputs gentle, this all happens fairly imperceptibly.

Push the pedal harder for more speed, though, and both power sources can drive the wheels together, which makes the pickup feel quite a bit stronger, although not as strong as it does in the smaller MG3 under the same circumstances. The stopwatch supports the sensation: the ZS’s 0-62mph time of 8.7 seconds is 0.7 seconds slower than the MG3’s.

The other difference is that the engine is a bit noisier at full throttle than it is in the MG3, presumably in part because it has to work that bit harder to shift the car’s extra weight. But although the engine sounds a little bit thrashy, the noise stays fairly distant, and it’s not too loud when cruising on the motorway, either.

As we’ve just mentioned, the MG ZS’s petrol engine can sound a wee bit thrashy when asked for full power, but even then it’s not massively loud, and if you keep your accelerator inputs more subtle, then the powertrain stays quiet and subdued.

Wind noise isn’t a huge factor, either, but unfortunately, road noise most definitely is. There’s a distinct rumble from the tyres to be heard even at moderate speeds, and by the time you’re cruising at motorway speeds, the rumble has turned into more of a roar. It’s significant enough that you might well find yourself raising your voice to talk to your front-seat passenger, or almost shouting to be heard by those in the back.

The second-generation MG ZS is yet to be crash-tested by Euro NCAP, so we don’t know how it’ll fare in a smash. The previous version only scored three out of five stars when it was tested way back in 2017, but the latest car is mechanically very different from its predecessor.

To help you avoid putting its crash credentials to the test for yourself, MG has fitted the ZS with an extensive suite of electronic driver aids, collectively known as MG Pilot. This includes forward collision warning with active emergency braking, blind spot detection, lane keep assist, lane change assist, lane departure warning, intelligent speed limit assist, rear cross traffic alert, and driver attention alert. You also get adaptive cruise control thrown in.

The latest MG ZS is rather too new for there to be any meaningful data available on the subject of reliability, and the same goes for a great many of the firm’s cars, most of which have been introduced or replaced very recently. 

When talking about the firm’s older cars, MG placed 18th out of the 29 manufacturers included in the latest HonestJohn.co.uk Satisfaction Index, which is a decidedly fair-to-middling result.

None of the firm’s cars featured on the study’s lists of the best- or worst-performing cars, in terms of either reliability specifically or overall customer satisfaction, which would again indicate that a fair-to-middling performance should be expected in both areas.

You can, however, take plenty of comfort from the company’s generous seven-year, 80,000-mile warranty. Service intervals stand at 12 months or 15,000 miles on the ZS, whichever occurs first.

Insurance groups for the new MG ZS Hybrid+ are yet to be announced, but the previous generation model was cheap to insure, with models sitting between groups 10 and 15.

The MG ZS’s hybrid drivetrain means it qualifies for a discount on your annual VED bill, but the discount amounts to only a tenner, leaving you with £180 to pay per year. That’s not going to form a major part of your decision to buy a hybrid, then.

MG likes to keep things simple, so there are two trim levels to choose from with the ZS, and once you’ve chosen which paint colour you’d like your car in (there’s one standard colour and five more that you pay extra for), there are no more optional extras on offer.

The entry-level trim is called SE, and it’s still very generously equipped, especially given the price. You get 17-inch alloy wheels, LED exterior lights, automatic lights and wipers, keyless entry, climate control air-conditioning, four electric windows, heated and electrically adjustable door mirrors, rear parking sensors and a reversing camera.

Despite the generosity of the entry-level version, though, the vast majority of customers pay the extra to upgrade to the top-of-the-range Trophy version, and this gets quite a few desirable upgrades. These include 18-inch alloys, heated front seats, heated steering wheel, an electrically adjusting driver’s seat, lumbar adjustment, man-made-leather upholstery, power folding door mirrors and 360-degree cameras.