MG ZS EV vs Jeep Cherokee

What's the difference?

The MG ZS EV Long Range is a practical small SUV that's easy to drive and the 440km it can travel on a full charge makes it the better choice over the standard range ZS EV. The extra 120km offered by the Long Range version reduces anxiety and is truly useful in covering more ground between charging.

The asking price may seem expensive but electric vehicle batteries are extremely costly to produce and will remain so for years to come.

Remember, too, that the MG4 electric car has an even great range for the same money - the only catch is, it's a hatch and not an SUV.

The Cherokee is perhaps not going to tempt anyone set on a mainstream mid-size family SUV. But, to those on the periphery who are genuinely looking for something different, there’s a lot on offer here.

The proposition is boosted by the Cherokee’s unique off-road equipment and compelling price tag, but just keep in mind it’s old-fashioned in more than just one way…

The ZS EV Long Range has a traditional SUV shape but with a very futuristic looking face thanks to its grille-less nose. That’s because with no radiator needed to cool a combustion engine there’s no need for an open vent or grille for air flow.

MG has used a textured plastic to subtly imitate an old-school grille to lessen the visual impact of a sheet of plastic between the headlights.

I think the effect works although the obvious charging flap could have been cleverly and seamlessly integrated into the nose, in the same way Genesis has done with the GV80 Electric. But the attempt has failed.

The ZS EV Long Range’s cabin looks premium with the sporty seats and red stitching, the landscape screen and digital driver display.

But, while the interior looks great, it feels a little low quality in places such as the vinyl upholstered seats. 

There are some ergonomic issues with the high centre armrest and the raised seating position, too.

Part of me wants to like the Cherokee. It’s a refreshingly modern take on the mid-size formula from Jeep. There’s another part of me which thinks it’s a bit soft around the edges with a little too much influence from the likes of the last-generation RAV4, especially around the rear. A smaller, heavily opinionated, part of me says it looks like the kind of car the Hamburgler would drive.

But you can’t deny the black paint with black and grey highlights looks tough. The raised plastic bumpers, small wheels, and red powder-coated recovery hooks speak to this SUV’s off-road ambition. And the package is nicely rounded out with LED light fittings front and rear which cut nice angles around this car’s edges.

Inside is still very… American, but this has been toned down significantly from past Jeep offerings. There are almost no truly awful plastics now, with an abundance of soft-touch surfaces and nicer interaction points.

The wheel is still chunky and leather-clad though, and the multimedia screen is an impressive and bright unit taking centre stage in the dash.

My main complaint with the cabin is the chunky A-pillar which eats a bit of your peripheral vision, but otherwise it’s a plush design.

The ZS EV Long Range is a practical small SUV and it fit my little family of four, although my kids are both under 10 years old and not at the lanky teenager point yet.

Space on board is good, offering ample legroom for even me (at 188cm) in the second row and adequate headroom back there, too.

I like the large door pockets, the wireless phone charger, and there are two USB ports for the back seats and another two up front.

The second row also has directional air vents and dark-tinted windows. I liked the panoramic sunroof's retractable shade, too. 

SUVS like the MG ZS offer easier access than sedans and hatches thanks to the elevated ride height which means people of my height don’t need to crawl in and out on their knees.

Boot capacity is decent at 359 litres, but not enormous.  

The plushness makes for a comfortable environment, particularly for front passengers who benefit (in this case) from power adjustable seats, telescopically adjustable steering column and faux-leather trimmed padded surfaces pretty much everywhere.

There are small bottle holders in the doors, big bottle holders in the centre console, a large armrest box, and a small trench in front of the transmission stick. Sadly the Cherokee seems to miss out on the secret compartment under the seat base which the smaller Compass gets.

Back seat occupants get a decent, but not impressive, amount of space. I’m 182cm tall and had a small amount of airspace for my knees and head. There are small bottle holders in the doors, pockets on the back of both front seats, a set of movable air vents and USB ports on the back of the centre console, plus large bottle holders in the drop-down armrest.

Seat trim all-around has to be commended for being ultra-soft and comfortable, albeit not super supportive.

The second row is on rails, allowing you to max out boot space if need be.

Speaking of boot space, it’s a tough one to compare to other models because Jeep is insistent on using the SAE standard rather than the VDA standard (as one is more or less a liquid measurement, and the other is one made up of cubes, they are impossible to convert). Regardless, the Cherokee managed to consume all three items in our luggage set with ease, so it at very least has a competitive standard boot capacity.

The floor in our Trailhawk was carpeted, and a luggage cover comes standard. Worth noting is how high the boot floor is off the ground. This limits the space available, but is required for the full-size spare hidden under the floor, a must for long-distance drivers.

Does it represent good value for the price? In a word: Yes.

Let’s take a look. The Trailhawk is the most expensive Cherokee you can buy, yet at $48.450 you’ll get stacks of gear. In fact, you’ll get more stuff than is packed in to most of its mid- to high-spec mainstream rivals.

The question is whether you’ll even want it. This is because while the Cherokee might tick key mid-size spec boxes, its real advantage is in the off-road gear sitting underneath it.

This is one of very few front- drive biased, transverse-mounted engine SUVs to get a locking rear differential, low-range transfer case, and a series of rather serious computer-controlled off-road modes.

Impressive stuff if you’re ever going to take it onto sand or scrabbling up gravel surfaces, potentially of little value if there’s no chance you’ll be doing any of those things.

Regardless, the standard road-going kit is great. Included is LED headlights, leather seats, keyless entry and push-start, an 8.0-inch multimedia touchscreen with Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, sat nav and DAB+ digital radio, auto wipers, anti-glare rear vision mirror, and 17-inch alloys.

Those wheels might seem a bit small by high-spec SUV standards, but are more focused on being off-road ready.

Our car was also fitted with the ‘Premium Pack’ ($2950) which adds some luxury touches like heated and cooled front seats with memory power adjust, carpeted boot floor, distance control for the active cruise (more on that in the safety section of this review), and black painted wheels.

The MG ZS EV has one electric motor driving the front wheels and it makes 115kW of power and 280Nm or torque.

That’s the same power as the petrol MG ZS, but more torque, so it accelerates faster. We’re talking 0-100km/h in 8.5 seconds. 

Sure, that’s not Tesla quick, but being an electric car the acceleration is instantaneous with none of the lag petrol cars have due to turbos or changing gears.

How much can the ZS EV tow? Not much. The braked towing capacity of the ZS EV Long Range is 500kg. But think of it like this: a box trailer can weigh about 250kg and a fully grown Sumatran tiger can also weigh up to 250kg.

So an ZS EV Long range can tow a box trailer carrying a fully grown tiger. That sounds impressive.

For more on what the ZS EV Long Range is like to drive, keep reading.

The Cherokee shows its star-spangled heritage here with a rather old-school drivetrain.

Under the bonnet is a 3.2-litre ‘Pentastar’ non-turbo V6. It produces 200kW/315Nm which you might note isn’t much more than a lot of turbocharged 2.0-litre alternatives these days.

If you were hoping for a diesel as a more attractive option for long-distance travel, tough luck, the Trailhawk is V6 petrol only.

The engine is perhaps at odds with the modern nine-speed torque converter automatic transmission, and the Trailhawk is one of the few front-biased, non-ladder chassis-based vehicles to have a low-range crawl gear and locking rear differential.

The Trailhawk drives all four wheels.

The ZS EV Long Range has a larger battery than the standard range ZS EV and this gives it the ability to travel further on a full charge. 

The regular version is fitted with a 51.1kWh battery and the Long Range has a 72.6kWh battery which is pretty big - and that gives this an official range of 440km. 

The standard range ZS EV has a range of 320km. So the Long Range will get you 120km further which could make all the difference in whether you make it to your destination or not.

So, is 440km a lot compared to other electric cars? Well, it’s more range than the Nissan Leaf (385km) or Mini Electric (233km), but not as much as the Kia Niro (460km) and 50km less than the entry-grade Tesla Model 3 (491km).

Put it this way, the 320km offered by the standard ZS EV falls short of what I think is enough. But anything with more than 400km is truly useful and I find anything less than this can bring on range anxiety pretty quickly.

The ZS EV Long Range is fully electric and that means you’ll have to plug it in to charge it. 

You can charge up using a household power point, but it’ll take more than 24 hours to get to 100 per cent. So, a much better idea is to use a fast public charger.

A 50kW charger will take the battery from empty to 80 percent in 63 minutes using a CCS Type 2 port/plug.

As for energy efficiency, MG says that after a combination of open and urban roads the ZS EV Long Range will use 17.7kWh/100km.

I drove our ZS EV Long Range every day and used it for school drop offs, city commutes and some motorway running. And while most of the 156km I travelled was urban-based the trip computer was reporting an average of 20.0kWh/100km.

In the spirit of keeping the hard-done-by fuel conglomerates in business, this V6 is as thirsty as it sounds. This is compounded by the fact that the Trailhawk weighs in at close to two tonnes.

The official claimed/combined figure is already not great at 10.2L/100km, but our week-long test produced a figure of 12.0L/100km. Not a good look when many of the Cherokee’s mid-size competitors are at least in the single-digit range, even in real-world testing.

In a small concession, you’ll be able to fill up (annoyingly frequently) with entry-level 91RON unleaded. The Cherokee has a 60L fuel tank.

At first, the driver’s seat felt overly high and the lack of reach adjustment in the steering wheel made finding a good driving position harder.

But, the ZS EV Long Range is comfortable and easy to drive, while its size and ‘electric zippiness’ makes this little SUV perfect for narrow city streets and tight car spaces. 

Some EVs have break-neck acceleration and minimalist cabin controls which can feel weird, but the ZS EV Long Range’s cabin looks just like a regular combustion engine car’s and the motor has the same power as a petrol ZS’s engine.

That said, the instant acceleration of their ZS EV Long Range is fun and great for moving quickly out of car space, merging and overtaking when needed.

As with all EVs, passengers who are prone to motion sickness might find the acceleration and heavy deceleration a bit much. My family didn’t complain but the photographer who filmed the video above found it a bit much while looking down at his screen.

The Cherokee drives pretty much exactly how it looks, soft and ‘murican.

As thirsty as the V6 might be, it’s fun in a kind of retro way to be behind the wheel. It makes lots of angry noises and flies up the rev range (into fuel-drinkin’ town) all too easily, although despite that you might notice you’re not going particularly fast the whole time.

This is largely down to the Cherokee’s overbearing weight. Not great for fuel usage, it does have benefits for comfort and refinement.

On tarmac, and even gravel surfaces, the interior is impressively quiet. There’s little road noise or suspension rattle, and even the fury of the V6 is more of a distant thrum.

Gravity takes its toll in the corners, where the Cherokee hardly feels like a confident apex carver. The steering is light though, and the long-travel suspension is soft and forgiving. This makes for a refreshing SUV experience which places the focus solely on comfort over sportiness.

It’s also a nice point of difference from many mainstream competitors which seem hell-bent on making mid-size family SUVs handle like sports sedans or hatchbacks.

A test of the off-road features was a little outside the scope of our regular weekly test, although a thrashing down a few gravel tracks only served to confirm my confidence in the comfort suspension tune and stability of the standard all-wheel drive mode on offer.

In its last update the Cherokee acquired an active safety suite consisting of auto emergency braking (AEB) with pedestrian detection, forward collision warning, lane departure warning, blind spot monitoring, rear-cross traffic alert, and active cruise control.

The Trailhawk Premium Pack adds distance control (via a button on the steering wheel).

The Cherokee is also armed with six airbags, a reversing camera and parking sensors. It has dual ISOFIX child-seat mounting points on the outer rear seats.

Only four-cylinder Cherokees have been ANCAP safety tested (and scored a maximum five stars in 2015). This six-cylinder version does not carry a current ANCAP safety rating.

The ZS EV Long Range is covered by MG’s seven-year/unlimited kilometre warranty. The battery is covered by a seven-year unlimited kilometre warranty, too. 

Servicing is recommended by MG at 40,000km/24 month intervals.

According to MG the first service costs $295, then the next is $810, then $295 for the third, $810 for the next and so on. That’s about $233 a year over six years which is excellent value.

Jeep has upped its ownership promise in the past few years with what it calls the “there and back guarantee”. This consists of a five-year/100,000km warranty and matching capped price service program.

It’s a shame the warranty is distance-limited, but time-wise is on par with Japanese makers. While the capped price service program is welcome, it's almost twice as expensive as an equivalent RAV4.

According to Jeep’s online calculator, services varied from $495 to $620 on this particular variant.

Roadside assist is offered beyond the warranty period provided you continue to service your vehicle at an authorized Jeep dealership.