MG ZS vs Fiat 500X

What's the difference?

Let me put it this way: Like-for-like, the ZS is better as an EV than it is as a petrol car, but it seems to be a story of getting what you pay for.

I don’t mean that the ZS EV is cheap and therefore nasty. In fact, I think it’s priced just right at the moment for a city EV entry-point. It offers all the key features a city-based EV buyer should be looking for, compares favourably to rivals on the value front, and is better than the standard ZS to drive and use.

It certainly has its flaws, and you can pay more to get rid of them by buying a Nissan Leaf, which, in my opinion drives better and has superior software, but then you’re forking out significantly more money for a similar driving range. On that basis, I think MG has found its entry-level EV niche and should be applauded for bringing the overall cost of entry down in Australia. Only time will tell if buyers warm to the idea, but the brand’s initial sales figures of nearly 700 units at least suggests it will be a success.

The 500X is a fun-looking alternative to the various options available from everyone else and is - overall - better to drive than its Renegade twin. 

It packs a very good safety package which you can't ignore but does lose points on the warranty and servicing regime. But it's also built to take four adults in comfort, which not every car in the segment can boast.

MG’s formula for success is pretty simple. Make affordable cars that are good looking. Not so hard really, is it?

The ZS EV wears the chrome-embossed styling of the range, while offering its own take on the grille, complete with a unique colour choice, ‘Clipper Blue’, which looks quite fetching.

Original? Maybe not. There’s a clear influence of Mazda in the chrome bits and headlight clusters, while the rear is a little bit Mitsubishi ASX in its finish. If the ZS T is anything to go by, though, MG’s design is set to evolve into very much its own look in the near future.

The brilliance of the overall exterior looks is that they combine before-seen elements into something fresh, which looks good in bright colours and leaves an impression of youthfulness. Accessible cars, ready for the social-media age, then.

The interior of the ZS EV is improved over the regular ZS, too. There are more soft materials in the doors and dash, while the brand has taken the electrification opportunity to tidy up the centre console and media screen into something a bit neater and more contemporary.

There’s even some cool attention to detail in things like the shift dial, which is finished with a rotary texture, and pressing it down to go into Park makes it glow red. The little toggle switches for the driving functions are a nice touch too.

The seats and touchpoints look good at a distance but aren’t as great to touch. The steering wheel is okay, but the faux leather trim in the seats is pretty ordinary, as is the detailing in the doors and dash. I wasn’t so much a fan of the way the centre console arches up, finished in a thin layer of vinyl trim, but it’s worth remembering that the ZS EV is based on an outgoing small SUV. In fact, if you want to take a look at just how much the interior of the ZS has improved for this EV version in lots of little ways, check out Matt Campbell’s 2019 review of the petrol car.

Look, I like the 500X, but I know why people don't. It's clearly a 500X in the way a Mini Countryman is a Mini. It looks like a 500, but get closer and you see the difference. It's chubby like a $10 weekend market Bhudda statue and has great big googly eyes like Mr Magoo. I find this endearing, my wife does not. The looks aren't the only thing she doesn't like.

The cabin is a bit more restrained and I quite like the band of colour stretching across the dash. The 500X is meant to be a bit more grown up than the 500, so there's a proper dash, more sensible design choices but it still has the big buttons, perfect for the meaty fingers of people who won't be buying this car.

This is a small SUV, so it’s not huge on the inside. There are some areas where it shines, and others where it isn’t as good.

Not so great? The seating position. Like the HS mid-sizer, the ZS has a really high and slightly awkward seating position, which has you peering down on the instruments and the road. SUV like? Yes. Some people will probably like the commanding view of the road, but it wasn’t for me. The seats are soft and initially quite comfy, but offer limited support for longer journeys. Adjustability is reasonable, and I eventually found a position that suited me, with good visibility out the front and rear.

Cabin storage isn’t bad. Because there’s no need for a transmission or anything under the floor, there’s a new cutaway with a large bay under the centre console, which also hosts two USB ports, a small tray area under the climate controls, a weird bottle holder cutaway deep-set in the raised console area, and a tiny console box armrest (at least it has one, some small SUVs don’t). There is a large bottle holder and a small bin in the door cards, too.

The rear seat isn’t bad. My 182cm tall frame fits behind its own driving position with a tiny amount of knee space, and there are soft trims on the backs of the front seats if you’re any taller and have your knees pressing up. The backs of the front seats feature pockets, and there’s a small tray and single USB outlet on the back of the centre console, although there are no adjustable rear air vents. I have enough headroom and the soft seats, clad in the so-so faux leather stuff, continue. There’s no armrest with bottle holders, but the rear doors have a single large one each. Outboard seats feature ISOFIX child-seat-mounting points, while the rear row has top-tether all the way across.

Again, if you want to see how much the ZS has improved over the years, check out our earlier reviews. It’s hard to recognise the dash and storage areas from the petrol version.

The boot comes in at 359-litres, which is impressive, not only because it compares well to the small SUV segment, but because it’s entirely unchanged from the petrol version. It just fit our entire CarsGuide demo luggage set with a little Tetris work, as the available space seems to be taller than it is wide. There are useful nettings behind the wheelarch on each side for securing small objects, but where the EV has had extra thought applied is in the under-floor area. There you will find a styrofoam bracket with little cutouts for storing charging cables. Few EVs have this sort of thing, strangely.

Sadly, the under-floor batteries mean you lose the spare wheel. Instead, you’ll have to make do with a repair kit.

At just 4.25 metres, the 500X isn't big, but makes the most of what it's got. The boot impresses at 350 litres and with the seats down, I think you could reasonably expect to triple that figure, though Fiat doesn't have an official number that I can find. For added Italian feel, you can tip the passenger seat forward to get really long things in, like a Billy bookshelf flat pack from Ikea.

Rear seat passengers sit high and upright meaning leg and kneeroom are maximised and with that tall roof, you won't scrape your head. 

The doors each have a small bottle holder for a total of four and Fiat has got serious about cupholders - the 500X now has four.

I drove the Pop Star, which is the second of the now-two model "regular" range, the other being the, er, Pop. I drove a Special Edition in 2018 and it's not clear if it is Special as there's also an Amalfi Special edition. Anyway.

The $30,990 (plus on-road costs) Pop Star has 17-inch alloys, six-speaker Beats-branded stereo, dual-zone climate control, reversing camera, keyless entry and start, active cruise control, sat nav, auto headlights and wipers, leather shifter and steering wheel and a space-saver spare.

The Beats-branded stereo speakers are supplied with noise from FCA's UConnect on a 7.0-inch touchscreen. The same system is in a Maserati, don't you know. Offering Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, UConnect loses points by shrinking the Apple interface into a lurid red frame. Android Auto properly fills the screen, for some reason which is ironic given Apple owns the Beats brand.

The ZS EV has an electric motor capable of producing 105kW and a whopping 353Nm (not as break-neck as it sounds, more on that later) of torque. Again, this is a healthy upgrade from combustion versions of this car. It drives the front wheels via a single-speed reduction-gear transmission.

Fiat's rather excellent 1.4-litre turbo MultiAir does duty under the stubby bonnet, making 103kW and 230Nm. Rather less excellent is the six-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission, which sends power through the front wheels only.

It's rated to tow a 1200kg braked trailer and 600kg unbraked.

Now the important stuff. The ZS EV is the cheapest EV in Australia, but it offers a range comparative to the Nissan Leaf at a claimed/combined 263km from its 44.5kWh battery pack.

The ZS has a European-standard Type 2 CCS port mounted centre front under the MG badge, and can charge at a maximum of 7.2kW on AC power, or 80kW on DC power.

This means estimated charging times from 10 to 80 per cent of 45 minutes on DC, seven hours on 7kW AC, or 25 hours on a 2.3kW wall socket.

The ZS EV comes with a wall socket to Type 2 cable, although MG offers a Type 2 to Type 2 public charging cable (which we strongly recommend for convenience) as a $295 dealer option.

I charged the ZS twice in my week with it, both times at a public 11kW AC charger local to me, which is charged by solar and is therefore free. It added around 50km of range in an hour.

The ZS EV also offers three levels of regenerative braking, and I spent the majority of my time in the highest regen setting. The ZS EV’s official combined consumption figure is 16.2kWh/100km, and on my test week my car returned a figure of 14.6kWh/100km. Not bad, and similar or even slightly better than its Nissan Leaf competitor, in which I recorded 15.3kWh/100km. It was not as good as the Hyundai Ioniq, however, which has the honour of the best on-test consumption I’ve ever scored at 12.3kWh/100km.

My car looked set to get around 304km of range on a full charge at its as-tested consumption rate - well over the WLTPcombined claim.

Fiat rather optimistically suggest you'll get a combined cycle figure of 5.7L/100km but try as I might, I couldn't do better than 11.2L/100km. What's worse, it demands 98RON fuel, so it's not the cheapest car to run. This figure us consistent with past weeks in the 500X and no, I wasn't thrashing it.

The ZS EV is a different car to drive altogether, compared to the rest of the range. This is a very good thing, with the electric motor, drive modes and feedback being reasonably good, and you can forget the usual transmission and power woes we find with many small SUVs.

The ZS gets along nicely with its 105kW/353Nm, it’s much faster in a straight line than any other ZS, but it’s not as breakneck as it sounds. The torque seems to be distributed with some restraint, so that accelerating hard doesn’t overwhelm the little front tyres. Expect similar performance to a Nissan Leaf or Hyundai Ioniq; it’s smooth and strong, but not as extreme as, say, a Tesla.

Needless to say, the well of instantly available torque is fantastic for both urban driving and the freeway, making the ZS EV easily one of the best MGs to drive.

However, some woes are still present. While the ZS handles better than its combustion counterparts, thanks to the lower centre of gravity, it’s easy to tell the suspension has a hard time dealing with its nearly 1600kg weight, and the drivability in the corners suffers as a result.

It’s soft over the front axle, but harder over the rear, leading to really abrupt moments over bumps, or when the driving surface is a little uneven, despite a generally spongey and bouncy ride. This can lead to some disconcerting moments on the rebound, as the car tilts to and fro a little before settling.

Understeer is also an ever-present threat, as this car will lean well into the front tyres during cornering and requires some discipline on the accelerator not to break traction. It all adds up to a bit of a frumpy, uneven drive experience, which needs improvement. Thankfully, the steering is pretty well tuned, offering a relatively organic feel and giving you a good handle on what’s going on at the front tyres.

It is at its best at lower speeds, as the soft ride will filter out small bumps and corrugations relatively well, while hitting speed bumps and driveways is met with a pleasant bounce.

It’s not as though MG can’t do better, either, with the ZS T improving its ride and handling in many critical areas, but it’s clear that, for this older version, this aspect wasn’t a priority during development.

Still, if you stick to what this car’s envisioned purpose is – driving around town – the seats and cabin are pretty comfortable, the visibility is good, and parking is easy. Even on the freeway, this car’s adaptive cruise and lane-keep systems aren’t bad, and benefit from the rolling software updates MG undertakes as feedback comes in from the global markets in which it plays.

The electrification features are decent, too. While it might not be as smooth or refined as Hyundai electric cars are, the three levels of regen braking will offer something for everyone, and the feedback through the analog dial should give a good amount of data on how to make the most of the regeneration.

It is missing a sleek operating system, though. Hyundai’s Android-based software is simple but effective, integrating the nav with the range calculation and driving style, while Tesla’s sublime software with its app and pre-prep features really showcase what an electric car can do.

Regardless, you get what you pay for, and that’s the case here with the ZS. It’s not the best to drive, and it doesn’t have as slick a software offering, but it does offer all the key parts of electric motoring at a strictly defined price.

Again, I shouldn't like the 500X but I really don't mind it. It's flawed, which might be why.

The dual-clutch transmission is dumber than a box of loose cogs, lurching from start and looking the other way when you expect it to shift. We know the engine is a good one and I think part of the reason it's so thirsty is the confused way the transmission goes about its business. I'd love to drive a manual to see what it's like.

The 500X initially feels worse than its Jeep Renegade sibling-under-the-skin, which is quite an achievement. Part of that is to do with the ride, which is very choppy below 60km/h. The first 500X I drove wallowed about but this one is a bit tauter, which would be good if you weren't punished with this bounciness.

The seats themselves comfortable and the interior is a good place to hang out. It's reasonably quiet, too, which is at odds with the old-school silliness of its conduct. It feels like Labrador let out of after day kept inside.

And that's where the car I shouldn't like is a car I do like - I really like that it feels like you're on Roman cobblestones, the type that make your knees hurt when you walk on them for a day. The steering wheel is too fat and is at a weird angle, but you kind of square up to it and drive the car like your life depends on it. You have to take it by the scruff, correct the shifts with the paddles and show it who's boss.

Obviously, that's not for everyone. If you drive it really gently, it's a very different experience, but that means going slowly everywhere, which is no fun at all and not at all Italian.

Out of the box, you get seven airbags, ABS, stability and traction controls, forward collision warning, high and low speed AEB, active cruise control, rollover stability, lane departure warning, lane keep assist, blind spot sensor and rear cross traffic alert. That's not bad for a $30,000 car full stop, let alone a Fiat.

There are two ISOFIX points and three top-tether anchors for baby seats. 

The 500X scored a five-star ANCAP rating in December 2016.

Electrified MGs have an annoying caveat in that they miss out on the excellent seven-year warranty of the rest of the brand’s combustion range. Instead, you’re left with a still industry-standard five-year warranty. The battery pack is covered for eight years or 160,000km, to add a little extra confidence.

MG also tells us the battery system in the ZS is entirely modular, and individual units can be removed and replaced if they go wrong.

Capped-price servicing is not yet locked in for MG in Australia, although the brand tells us that it is in the works and will be available imminently. Electric cars are generally much cheaper to run than combustion cars, due to the lack of moving parts, so we’d expect the ZS EV to have the lowest running costs of the lot. 

Fiat offers a three-year/150,000km warranty, along with roadside assist for the same period. It's not great as more manufacturers shift to five years. 

Service intervals arrive once a year or 15,000km. There is no fixed or capped-price servicing program for the 500X.