Holden Equinox vs MG HS

What's the difference?

Overlook the Holden Equinox LTZ-V and you could miss out on a practical, spacious and value-for-money mid-sized SUV. Concerned about Holden’s exit from Australia and how this affects servicing and parts? Well Holden has assured us that it will provide servicing support for 10 years following its closure at the end of 2020. If anything, you could be picking up a bargain and one of the last cars to wear a Holden badge.

MG is quietly establishing itself as a champion of the electric space, with this HS mid-sizer offering a compelling list of specs with a long electric range in an attractive package.

It is still lacking in a few obvious areas, from driving dynamics to charging speed, but it’s doing its part at the asking price to at least make a plug-in hybrid alternative worth considering.

Big cheesy grin grille? Check. Flowing curves? Check. Sharp creases? Check. Irregular shapes? Check.

The Equinox is a bit of a mishmash of design elements which doesn't win this reviewer over.

The sloping, broad grille bears more than a passing resemblance to the Cadillac family face, and hints at the Equinox’s American origins. In the United States the SUV wears a Chevrolet badge, although ours is built in Mexico.

The shape of the rear-side window is also a little jarring to me. If you want to see something you’ll never be able to unsee, take a look at my video above where I turn this mid-sized SUV into a small sedan. That sounds ridiculous but, trust me, watch it and be amazed.

How big is the Equinox? Just when you thought the design of the Equinox couldn’t get any more peculiar it does. The Equinox is longer than most of its rivals at 4652mm end-to-end but about the same width at 1843mm across (2105mm to the ends of the wing mirrors).

Telling the LTZ and the LTZ-V apart is tricky, but you can spot the top-grade Equinox by its sunroof and a metallic window garnish around the widows of the rear doors.

Inside is a premium and modern cabin. There’s a high quality feel here from the materials used on the dash, seats and doors, to the display screen which sits at an angle that’s perfect for my reach, although others in the CarsGuide office aren’t quite as enamored with it.

Many cars are dressed up at the front of the cabin, but lack the same treatment in the rear, and the Equinox is a case in point, with hard plastics used around the window sills and the back of the console.

MG’s success is not just in being one of the most affordable but making affordability so damn good looking.

Taking cues from Mazda’s successful glitzy design formula, the HS impresses with a chrome-embossed grille, chiselled light clusters, combining with a curvaceous bonnet for an eye-catching face.

Down the side the curvy lines continue, undulating over the wheelarches, to a well resolved rear-end, complete with tidy light clusters and even dual-exhaust pipes.

Look at this car a little too long, though, and you start to find more than a few flaws with its design.

Sure, it’s eye catching, but the 17-inch alloys do a pretty ordinary job of filling those big wheelarches, and there’s something a little off about the ride height.

You can also see the rear suspension control arms sitting well below the base of the rear, a reminder the HS is an SUV based on the MG6 sedan.

Suffice it to say, while it looks great at a few paces, up close it misses out on some of the nuance and poise of its rivals.

Inside follows the same formula of the outside, with attractive curvy lines, a sporty-looking steering wheel and a pair of dazzling screens.

Again, though, look closer and you’ll see this otherwise modern-looking interior is not as impressive beneath the surface.

The seats look plush but feel cheap with vinyl trim, and the same goes for the door cards and centre console. All have soft-touch surfaces which, in reality, are paper thin. It still beats having hard plastic in the doors, though, so context is everything.

The plastic trims throughout are also hit-and-miss, with some looking great, and others hard and nasty.

The +EV versions of the HS ditch the mechanical shifter in the centre console for an electronic one, which combines nicely with the digital dash to make the cabin feel more modern than even some more upmarket rivals.

The Equinox’s greatest strength is its spaciousness and much of that comes down to its wheelbase.

See, the longer a car’s wheelbase the more room there is for the passengers inside. The  Equinox’s wheelbase is longer than most of its rivals (25mm longer than a CX-5’s) and that goes some way to explaining how, at 191cm tall, I can sit behind my driving position with plenty of knee room.

The longer wheelbase also means the rear wheelarches don’t cut far into the back doors, which allows for a wider aperture and easier access.

So, if you have young kids like me, they’ll find it easy to climb in, but if they’re really little the large opening will make it easy for you to put them into their car seats.

Headroom, even with the LTZ-V’s sunroof, is good in the back seats, too.

Cabin storage is excellent: the centre console bin is enormous, the door pockets are large; there are four cupholders (two in the back and two up front),

Even with all this extra room, however, the Equinox is only a five-seater SUV. Still, that leaves you with a large boot with cargo capacity of 846L when the rear row is up and 1798L with the second-row seats folded.

The Equinox has power outlets galore: three 12-volt sockets, a 230-volt power point; five USB ports (including one type C); and a wireless charging bay. That’s more outlets than any mid-sized SUV I’ve tested.

A flat floor in the second row, large windows and comfortable seats complete a well-appointed and practical cabin.

Really, the only reasons the Equinox doesn't score 10-out-of-10 here is the lack of a third-row seat, and sunshades or privacy glass for the rear windows.

There are some particularly strange things about the HS’s cabin when it comes to practicality.

The seats are perhaps the biggest issue. Not only are they clad in a cheap feeling vinyl, but the seating position is very high, and you hardly sink into the seat base, leaving you with the impression you’re sitting on the car rather than in it. Weird.

Visibility is great out the sides of this car, but with the seating position the way it is, I feel like my head is close to the roof and the windscreen has a narrow letterbox aspect. This is complicated further by the rear vision mirror, which sticks a fair way down into your field of view.

The front of the cabin feels plenty wide enough, though, and there are some other practicality wins, like the multimedia screen which is easily within reach.

Its limited resolution is a benefit here, with the touch elements being big and easy to reach while you’re concentrating on the road, but the stock software is clumsily laid out and slow, taking a full second or two to react to some interactions.

This is especially notable as the entire climate system is operated via the touchscreen.

The cabin offers up decent storage. There are big bottle holders in the doors as part of a larger bin, and there are a further two large bottle holders in the centre console with a removable divider.

The armrest box opens to reveal a small storage area, which also has an internal vent for the air-conditioning.

Under the shortcut buttons up front there’s a flip-open tray with two USB outlets and a 12V port, but this little opening is so tiny it’s no good to store any kind of object. It’s also impossible to close the flip cover if you have something plugged in.

The rear seat is one of the HS’s best attributes. Compared to even the front seats, the rear passenger space is enormous, with ample width, headroom, and legroom.

The seats can recline slightly, and amenities are even impressive with two pockets on the backs of the front seats, large bottle holders in the doors, dual adjustable air vents, and two USB ports for rear passengers.

Of special note is the strangely lavish drop-down centre armrest, which is clad in soft trim and has a flip-open tray and dual bottle holders.

Rear seat space comes at a bit of a cost to boot capacity, though. The HS offers 451 litres, which is a little off-the-pace for the mid-size SUV segment. The rear seats intrude into the space a fair bit, and the floor is quite high.

It fit our three-piece CarsGuide luggage set, but only just, and it required removing the retractable luggage cover. Unlike the top-spec Essence, the Excite does not have a power tailgate.

No spare wheel in +EV versions of the HS, with the underfloor space housing a repair kit and a small cutaway for charging paraphernalia.

MG now calls its plug-in hybrid cars +EV. It says this is to help demystify the technology, by showing it’s essentially a combustion vehicle, plus an electric vehicle component.

If you ask me, ‘plus EV’ is actually more confusing, but the point is this new version brings the price down once again.

This is because the plug-in version of the HS originally launched in 2021, only as the top-spec Essence. The Essence is still one of the most affordable plug-in hybrids you can buy in Australia, but the new mid-grade Excite trim we’re looking at for this review brings it down further.

Wearing a drive-away price-tag of $46,990, the strategy here is to offer the more expensive plug-in hybrid technology at the cost of a mid-grade self-charging hybrid RAV4.

Elsewhere the HS Excite competes with higher grades of the currently combustion-only Hyundai Tucson and Kia Sportage, but the big threat for this car will likely emerge in the form of the self-charging hybrid Haval H6 which launces in the coming months.

The HS is immediately impressive in terms of its raw numbers, though, with a massive 16.6kWh battery pack granting it a relatively long 63km purely electric driving range (although this is to the more lenient NEDC standard).

Aside from its electric features, there’s an appealing list of spec items included, with 17-inch alloy wheels, a 10.1-inch multimedia touchscreen with wired Apple CarPlay and Android Auto support, a 12.3-inch digital dash cluster, keyless entry with push-start ignition, six-way power seat adjust for the driver, heated front seats, dual-zone climate control, and a pretty good reversing camera.

What do you miss out on picking the more affordable Excite PHEV over the top-spec Essence? 18-inch alloys, a panoramic sunroof, improved seat trim, and, disappointingly, LED headlights. The Excite only ships with old-school halogen bulbs.

It’s also worth noting the hybrid RAV4s can be all-wheel drive at this price, while the +EV variants of the HS are front-drive only. Still, this mid-size SUV is one of the most affordable PHEVs on the market.

The Equinox LTZ-V has the most powerful engine in the Equinox line-up – a 188kW/353Nm 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo-petrol engine.

The only other grade in the line-up to have this engine is LTZ, although it doesn’t have the LTZ-V’s all-wheel drive system.

It’s a powerful engine, especially considering that it’s just a four cylinder. Only a bit more than a decade ago V8s were making less power.

The nine-speed automatic transmission shifts slowly, but I found it to be a smooth unit at all speeds.

This is where plug-in hybrids tend to get a bit complicated, so bear with us.

The MG HS +EV pairs a 1.5-litre, four-cylinder, turbo-petrol engine with an electric motor on the front axle. The two drive the front wheels via a new 10-speed traditional torque converter automatic transmission, instead of the dual-clutch which features in the combustion-only versions of this car.

The engine produces 119kW/250Nm on its own, while the electric motor produces 90kW/230Nm. The two combined produce 189kW/370Nm, making the +EV by far the most powerful HS on the market, capable of accelerating from 0-100km/h in 6.9 seconds.

Holden says the Equinox LTZ-V all-wheel drive with the 2.0-litre turbo-petrol four-cylinder and nine-speed auto transmission will use 8.4L/100km over a combination of open and urban roads.

My fuel test covered 131.6km, with 65km of that being city and suburban roads, while 66.6km were on the motorway almost entirely at 110km/h.

At the end of that I brimmed the tank with 19.13L of 95 RON premium unleaded which works out to be 14.5L/100km.

The trip computer disagreed and reported 13.3L/100km. Either way that’s a thirsty mid-sized SUV and it hadn’t even been carrying a full load of people or cargo.

The HS +EV backs its electric features with a relatively large 16.6kWh battery pack, allowing it a purely electric driving range rated at 63km.

This is on the more lenient NEDC standard, though, and our car was reporting between 40–45km on a full charge. Still pretty good for a plug-in hybrid mid-size SUV.

As a result of this well-supported system, +EV versions of the HS have an official/combined cycle fuel consumption figure of 1.7L/100km, but as with all plug-in hybrids this will depend on how you use it.

On my week-long test, the car returned a figure of 3.9L/100km, with the caveat I did run it out of charge on more than one occasion. The HS’s turbocharged engine requires mid-grade 95RON unleaded.

Take a moment to appreciate this mid-sizer still used less fuel than a tiny hatchback, but charging is a less impressive story.

MG says the +EV will charge to 100 per cent from the reserve level in five ours on a 7.0kW charging connection, the only problem is the numbers don’t add up.

If you divide 16.6 by five you get 3.3kW, which is the actual charging rate. For a battery this big, that’s too slow. To put it in perspective, it’s only slightly faster than if you were to charge it up from a wall socket, and makes this car best for those who can trickle charge it at home.

Even dragging out your grocery shop to, say, 2.5 hours, will only net you half this car’s battery, making it inconvenient if you need to rely on public charging to get by.

The Equinox’s handling isn’t superb and the ride could be more comfortable, but this is an SUV with far more good points than bad.

Such as impressive power from that four cylinder engine, and an all-wheel drive system which provides excellent traction, to the good visibility, and a stack of safety features.

But while I can excuse the average dynamics, the 12.7m turning circle proved annoying in car parks. Not knowing you can make U-turns in the space provided is an anxiety you should only experience when driving a bus.

Five-point turns aside, the LTZ-V is easy to drive, with accurate steering providing good road feel.

Okay, so once you get past the weird seating position we mentioned earlier, it's immediately apparent this hybrid version of the HS is the best to drive in the range.

The powerful electric motor in this car makes it so much smoother and easier to drive than the combustion car. It’s got quiet, smooth acceleration and a nice gentle regen braking, and you never even need to worry about what the transmission is doing.

This 10-speed automatic is so smooth it’s hard to tell what it’s doing at any given time, an out-of-sight improvement over the dual-clutch automatics which appear elsewhere in the range.

Where the HS isn’t as impressive is in the steering. It’s nicely weighted but a bit vague when it comes to feeling. I’m not super confident of what the front wheels are doing, and I feel like it doesn’t handle the additional weight from the big battery pack particularly well.

It feels comparatively top-heavy with a tendency towards mild understeer when you push it, missing some of the confidence its more established rivals have.

The ride is mixed. It’s generally soft, so it’s comfortable over smaller bumps, but when you hit big ones, it is evident the ride lacks a bit of control, because it will bounce around, and feel a little unsettled.

This imbalanced ride and handling is one of MG’s weak spots generally, which is why I’m surprised the electric drivetrain is so sleek, even comparable to Toyota systems.

When it comes to controlling those electric driving functions the HS defaults to a hybrid mode, where it seems to use primarily electric drive at lower speeds, activating the engine automatically at higher speeds, or when the accelerator is more heavily applied.

The only issue I have with this mode is I’m not sure at times how or why it decides to run the engine. With rival systems you’ll get some kind of ‘eco’ indicator which gives you an idea of when the engine will activate, but in this car there’s just a percentage indicator on the dash, which isn’t too helpful.

Your only other drive mode option is to stick it in EV mode, which you can do via a button on the centre console. In this mode it will only use the electric motor, and it’s able to do this at quite high speeds, so even if you’ve got a bit of an expressway or something on your drive it won’t necessarily need combustion support. Meaning you can have genuinely fully electric driving if you’ve got somewhere to charge it up at either end.

There’s no combustion or charge mode like some plug-ins have, and there is also no way to control the regen braking, so it’s not as customisable as we’d like. And the regen tune is relatively mild, so it’s probably not as energy efficient as it could be, either.

Still, the hybrid systems are impressively smooth and as a result the +EV versions of the HS are simply the best in the range to drive by a solid margin.

Although the Excite is the more affordable of the two +EV variants, it doesn’t miss out on any of MG’s active ‘Pilot’ safety suite.

This means it scores all the key items, from auto emergency braking (detects pedestrians at up to 64km/h and vehicles at up to 150km/h), plus lane keep assist with lane departure warning, to the rear-facing items including blind-spot monitoring and rear cross-traffic alert.

It also scores adaptive cruise control, which late last year received an update making it a bit less twitchy than in launch form.

Six airbags and the expected array of electronic braking, stability, and traction aids appear, but while combustion-only versions of the HS wear a maximum five-star ANCAP safety rating to the 2019 standards, the +EV versions are excluded from this rating as they arrived later.

The Holden Equinox is covered by a five-year, unlimited kilometre warranty. At the time this review was published Holden was offering seven years’ free scheduled servicing.

But normally, the Equinox is covered by a capped price servicing program which recommends servicing annually or every 12,000km and costs $259 for the first visit, $339 for the second, $259 for the third, $339 for the fourth and $349 for the fifth.

So, how will servicing work after Holden closes down? In Holden’s February 17, 2020, announcement that the company will cease trading by 2021 it said that it would support Australian and New Zealand customers in honouring all existing warranties and guarantees, while providing servicing and spare parts for at least 10 years. The current seven-year free servicing offer will also be honoured.

MG has tweaked its ownership promise for its electrified models recently. While the brand generally follows in the footsteps of challenger brands like Kia by offering an ahead-of-the curve seven-year warranty, this has only just been extended to the +EV variants.

Strangely, there’s also a seven-year, unlimited kilometre warranty for the high-voltage battery components, which is a bit different from the industry standard eight-year/160,000km warranty.

Capped price servicing has also been added covering the duration of the warranty. Each visit at 12 monthly or 10,000km intervals costs between $265 and $968, for a yearly average of $403.14.

Not expensive, but also not at the cheap end of the spectrum.