My MG ZS EV completes 8000 km: Observations driving in city & highway

If we drive without the AC, it definitely can hit the 350 - 400 km mark when driven between 80 - 100 km/h.

BHPian WhiskeyTangoFox recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Hello Everyone!

As I write this, we have completed just around 8000 km on our 2021 ZS EV and here are my findings after doing both city and highway stints.

In the city, the car is the same as I had mentioned before, easily gives us about 350 km of range in a single charge (Normal city traffic, about 20 - 30 km a day). We are left with about 40 -50 % of charge at the weekend and charge it up then using the 15 W Wall socket. It takes around 10 - 15 hours to fully charge it up. We haven't installed the 7 KW charger yet because we are considering adding Solar Panels to the household and we figured we'd install this after. As of right now, the running cost of the car in the city is pretty much Re 1 per km and our average monthly charging cost at home is Rs 450 - 600 depending on how far we drive it.

We haven't had any breakdown as such, however, once the car suddenly started leaking some sort of oil (which we noticed very late), not once did the car stutter and we actually finished a 500km round trip after which it was discovered. We took it to MG Electronic City where they found that a small oil seal of some sort had torn away and they had it replaced under warranty. This was at the 3000 km mark approximately and we haven't had an issue since.

Highway Trips Completed

• Bangalore to Coimbatore and back
• Bangalore to Yercaud and back
• Bangalore to Chikmagalur and back, Twice
• Bangalore to Madurai and back

Average driving speed between 80 km/h - 140 km/h

The car has really good stability and manoeuvrability, We drive on Eco and KERS 3 and get a range of about 290 - 300 km on a full charge with the AC used intermittently. If we drive without the AC, it definitely can hit the 350 - 400 km mark when driven between 80 - 100 km/h. The AC Really uses a lot of energy. The seats are great, you can easily drive for 200 km and not feel fatigued. The car can also take on most kinds of terrain, obviously not hardcore off-road scenarios, but it can easily take on trails, and estate roads (Yes I've driven it through two coffee estates, where jeeps normally go and haven't really had any issues) and bad patches with ease. Although I must say that the mud roads were dry and not slushy and I wouldn't recommend taking any 2WD Car into slush.

Zeon Charging Stations are what I'd recommend, but Tata works decently too. The Running cost on a highway is higher than what you'd pay in the city but is still way lesser than what you'd pay in an ICE Car. For example:

The Bangalore to Chikmagalur round trip was around 600 km. Our Verna (which used to give us around 14 km/l on the highways) would normally require just under a full tank of fuel (The full tank is 43L), which at today's rates in Bangalore would cost just over Rs 4300. The complete trip in the ZS, including the cost of charging at home the night before the trip came up to around Rs 1200.

Not everything is perfect though, the car has some very irritating software bugs at times. Some of them are:

• Battery percentage sync error between the app and car
• Music Player takes ages to boot up at times
• Android Auto sometimes doesn't start and I have to unplug and replug the USB for it to work
• (Very Rarely and the Most irritating) The Infotainment System doesn't turn off even when I turn off and lock the car. It takes a system reset to fix this.

The small negatives aside though, I still love the car. It has served us well so far, (Touchwood) and I hope we have many more happy miles to come.

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