With five product launches in six months, MG certainly isn’t slowing down when it comes to bringing new cars to market.

In July this year the SAIC owned brand launched the new 2024 variant of the MG HS, boasting a new facelift, improved, modernized, interior features and a hybrid version with a 24.7 kWh battery that provides an electric range of 75 miles.

A few months later, in September, the brand launched the new 2024 MH ZS Hybrid +, which is launching in October. The new vehicle comes with a number of improvements and adds a range of ADAS driver features, as well as a hybrid.

We spoke to David Allison, head of product planning, MG, to discuss the two new SUVs and to highlight their evolution from previous models.

Just Auto (JA): Could you discuss the 2024 MG HS and it’s evolution?

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David Allison (DA): I think it’s fair to say that the MG HS is our most important car. Over the last couple of years, it’s been our bestselling car. It sells in the biggest market segment (which is C segment SUV), which is worth anything up to 600,000 units a year. If we get this one wrong, then that obviously has some serious implications from a volume and profitability point of view.

The outgoing MG HS was probably the car that put us more back on the map than anything else.

In January 2023 it was the UK’s bestselling car, and that was the only time in MG’s 100-year history that that has ever happened. Then at the end of June this year, the point of when we started to change the car, it was the UK’s 8th bestselling vehicle.

What we’ve really tried to do with the 2024 MG HS is build on that formula of what’s made it really successful and take it to a bit more of a sophisticated position, both in terms of its design and its technology.

Design:

The design is a lot more contemporary than the previous one. When you put the two cars together you really notice the difference. It adopts the new MG family front-end that we first saw in MG 3. It has this wide-angle grille, the slim LED lights, and the connecting bar in between the headlights. Then around the rear it has the full-length light bar going across the back, and the X shape in the in the tail-light.

The design is a lot more contemporary than the previous one.

There’s a lot more of a distinction in certain design features and we saw on the previous car.

The other key change is in the interior. We’ve got two dual 12.3 inch screens, so it’s almost a 25 inch screen, although that they are distinctly different in terms of what they do.

Someone who’s coming from an older HS will notice a very big difference on the outside and a very big difference on the inside. That means that not only is it going to be a really compelling proposition for an existing customer, it’s going to appeal to someone that might not have considered the old MG HS because it looked a bit old fashioned, both inside and out.

The new MG HS is now a big car. It’s grown over the previous generation by four and a half centimeters, which is quite a lot; all of that length has gone into the wheelbase. The rear seat room in this car is massive. The boot is bigger as well.

One of the criticisms of the older MG HS was that whilst the rear seat room was good, it did compromise the boot space a little bit, so the boot space is over 500 litres now. It’s now a full-size segment C SUV; it’s almost verging on a D segment SUV.

MG HS

Performance:

I think the final thing is around the powertrains. At the launch, we’re starting with petrol, and plug-in hybrid. They are completely new generation powertrains. The petrol engine is the same configuration as the previous generation; it’s a 1.5 turbo, but it is completely new, both in terms of the engine and the transmission. The big change in the is in the plug-in hybrid. We’ve gone for a very large battery in the plug-in hybrid to give us an all-electric range of 75 miles.

What makes the 2024 MG HS stand out from other SUV models on the market?

I think that the one thing that probably trumps it all over everything else is value. One of the things that we try and do with everything is package all the things up; the changes, the features, and package it up in a value proposition that says you can have this for a lot less than most of the competitors.

The way that we did it with MG HS is that we’re offering a very big C segment sized SUV with all of the changes from a design point of view, an interior space point of view, a technology point of view, for the same price as most of our competitors offering a B segment SUV.

MG HS starts from GBP24,995 which is only GBP965 more than the previous generation. If you are a previous generation MG HS customer then there is so much of an upgrade for so little of a change in terms of price, so keeping those customers theoretically, should be relatively straightforward.

From a competitor point of view, people are increasingly looking for more value in their new car purchase. If you don’t necessarily want to spend (in a lot of cases) over GBP30,000, we’re at GBP6,000 to GBP7,000 less for our entry price car.

If you look at the residual value argument, we’ve got an extremely strong residual value projection for MG HS compared to the competition. R&D look at the car and they say it has all the bells and whistles and it’s priced very aggressively, which means that you shouldn’t need to discount it. The residual value on a MG HS after three years and 30,000 miles, is projected to retain about 55% of its value. If you’re buying a car on any kind of purchase agreement which is dependent on a residual value, like a PCP, then this would be good news.

Could you discuss the thinking behind the new 2024 ZS Hybrid+?

With the 2024 MG ZS, I think that the ZS traditionally did the job for us. The first-generation car went on sale late 2017, we’ve sold over 100,000 MG ZSs in the period since then.

It’s been a really important car, and one that, when it comes to replacing, it is again, very crucial that we get it right. B segment SUV is the second biggest market now, and it’s doubled its market share in about six or seven years from where it was to where it sits today. The traditional B segment C, segment hatchbacks have gone down, and they’ve been replaced by SUVs.

What I would say with MG ZS is it’s quite similar to what we did with MG 3. MG 3 was almost two generations forward from the car it replaced, the original car was pretty old. This one is probably more one and a half generations forward, even though it’s replacing a car that in its in its lifespan is similar to where most cars would sit, between five, or five to six years old.

Design:

The design, I’d say, is more of an evolution. If you look at the old car compared to the new car, you can see the similarities in there. One of the key changes is that, again, we adopt that new family face. It’s got quite a nice prominent shoulder line above the above the rear three quarters. It’s quite distinctive on the side, and bigger wheels. It sits on 18-inch wheels this time, as opposed to 17-inch wheels. It looks more purposeful than the previous generation.

The big difference with this car is the size. Whilst MG HS has grown by four and a half centimeters, this one’s grown by 10 centimeters, which is which is really quite big. It means that it sits right at the top of that B segment SUV category, and then sort of moving into the C segment.

Then you get the tech benefits; big screens, it’s got a 12.3-inch central touchscreen, which has a faster processor, much faster than before and it’s much more intuitive. We’ve got smartphone connectivity with MG ZS and it comes the MG pilot ADAS features.

Performance:

The other change is that we’ve gone hybrid with this car. It’s the same hybrid plus powertrain that we have in MG 3. It is a 1.5-liter, 75-kilowatt petrol engine, paired to a 1.83-kilowatt hour battery, and that’s quite big for our hybrid. For this kind of car, most competitors are around one kilowatt, maybe 1.2 kilowatt hours.

We also have a really big traction motor; it’s got 100-kilowatt traction motor for this car, and also a 45-kilowatt generator. The combined power on the on the on MG ZS is 145 kilowatts. From a performance perspective that’s much quicker than the previous generation, and at least a second quicker to 60 than any of the competitors.

The main benefits that you get with the hybrid plus powertrain is you still get really good economy; it’s about 55 miles to the gallon. It’s 115 grams of CO2, so it’s relatively good when it comes to CO2, but you don’t get any of the drop off in performance. The performance is the main component of the powertrain, because of the battery. It means that it stays in EV mode more of the time, particularly when you’re using it around town at low speed and you’re putting lots of regeneration into the battery.

There are three modes of regeneration as well. They’re configurable, which is quite unusual for a car like this. The hybrid plus powertrain is a big feature of this car. For people that are perhaps going to be using it for short journeys, you’ll do most of it in EV mode. That’s beneficial from an efficiency and economy point of view. Size and the hybrid plus powertrain are what I would say are the two big-ticket items in this car.

Price:

When you package all of that up, the price is similar to where most of our competitors have their internal combustion engine ‘B’ SUVs, and in some cases they’re ‘B’ segment superminis. We can offer a full size, big ‘B’ SUV with a hybrid powertrain for the same price or less as most of our competitors can offer their internal combustion engine, and in most cases, smaller B SUV. There’s a big value angle on this car, as much as there is with all our cars.

What is the timeline for the MG ZS Hybrid+?

First deliveries will be taking place the week commencing October the 7th to our dealers. The order banks opened when we announced pricing, which was the end of August.

What it means is this is our fifth product launch in six months. So, 62% of our range, (which is now eight cars), has been launched this year. The level of change that we’ve undergone in the last six months is absolutely unprecedented in my experience.

What we try to do is we try to bring a really great value for money product to market with all the equipment that people should realistically want and expect – and sell it for a reasonable price.

Our biggest challenge is still making people aware that the brand still exists. A lot of people are familiar with the brand, but not necessarily familiar with the modern interpretation of what MG sells. If you go back in the 100-year history of MG, they’ve made loads of cars which actually weren’t sports cars.

This romantic view of what MG was is not necessarily the same as what it is today. For me, our next job is to make sure that people know that the brand exists in its current format and what we sell.

The ZS

MG ZS Hybrid+ interior