► MG confirms it’ll enter the small EV market
► Clean-sheet car with fresh platform on the way
► And it sounds like it won’t have a pathetic range
The small, affordable electric car market is going to become the most hotly contested area of new car sales before the end of the decade. We’ve already had some exceptionally attractive offerings from the likes of BYD and Leapmotor – and it sounds like the next big player to enter the game is going to be MG.
At this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, I asked David Allison, MG’s head of product and planning, when MG will get into the A-segment. He said: ‘It’s absolutely something we have to do. And I think that it’s a great space for us to be moving into. Cars probably do have to get more affordable. So, the inevitable way that you do that is to make them smaller.’
He’s confident MG can break into the space soon, too. ‘I’m always amazed at how quickly this company evolves and how quickly it develops,’ he said. ‘In this instance, I’d like to think that we’d be in it within… Where are we? Middle of 2025? I’d like to think we’d be in it within the next 18 months. 18 months to two years. But there’ll be loads of other stuff that’s happening in between that period.’
What’s particularly impressive about his estimation is that neither MG nor SAIC currently has an A-segment vehicle on sale in China that they could feasibly port over to the European market in the same way they did with the IM5 and IM6. Small cars aren’t popular in China, so MG has had to start from scratch.
That isn’t easy, but Allison confirmed that MG’s engineers are already developing a new, small electric car platform especially for the project. That’s because the underpinnings for the MG4 and MG S5 aren’t adaptable enough to scale down to a car of that size.
It’s also worth remembering that the A-segment is basically non-existent in China. Chinese drivers like big cars, so MG will need pull on the expertise of its UK and European design centres and engineers to get its small electric car over the line. For Allison, having his team lead the charge on the car is a no-brainer.
‘We are the biggest global market [of A-segment cars],’ he said. ‘We are the spiritual home of the brand. We have the engineering facility in Longbridge. We have the advanced design studio in London. So yeah, I think we’ll get an awful lot of influence in what happens from a product planning perspective.’
Then there are the margins. Designing a small electric car is one thing, but if it doesn’t make any money then MG simply won’t build it. My discussions with the firm’s executives have made is it abundantly clear that MG’s bean counters are far too ruthless to allow for passion projects. Even the Cyberster was properly costed.
MG’s UK Commercial Director, Guy Pigounakis, outlined some of the marketing challenges he’ll face with an A-segment EV, starting with the price. ‘Nobody wants to spend a lot of money on them because they’re a small car,’ he said.
‘Everybody wants – even though with a typical city car, you’re only going to do 50, 75, maybe 100 miles a week – everybody still wants a battery that’s going to do 300 or 400 miles. Which costs money. The bigger batteries are heavy. Take up space.
‘So, bizarrely, with all the safety regs, engineering a small electric car is actually more challenging than engineering a big electric car, especially when you’re trying to do it at a price.’
Despite these headwinds, Pigounakis believes MG can pick up the gauntlet that’s been thrown down by the likes of the BYD Dolphin Surf, Dacia Spring and Leapmotor T03. He, rather boldy, said to me: ‘we can compete with anybody if we choose to.’ I’m looking forward to seeing the results.