MG ZS EV review: reliability & safety rating

Reliability is one of the big selling points of any electric car: they're simpler and more straightforward than petrol or diesel-engined vehicles, with fewer moving parts, and therefore less likely to go wrong.

There's also reassurance on the safety front: the ZS EV has an impressive suite of passive and active safety equipment as standard, and it did better than its petrol-engined sibling when independently assessed for safety by Euro NCAP, scoring the maximum five stars.

MG ZS EV reliability & problems

The electric ZS is a fairly new car but it's had enough time to impress. It was crowned as the best electric car to own in the 2020 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey – not least because it's so cheap to buy and run. However, the ZS overall finished in 61st position out of 75 models on the list of best new cars to own in the 2022 edition of the survey, with an impressive ninth-place score for value, but MG was last-but-one on the list of the best carmarkers in the same survey.

Safety

The petrol-engined MG ZS garnered a middling three-star safety rating from the independent crash-testing experts at Euro NCAP, but the electric version did better, primarily due to its additional active safety technology. It scored the maximum five stars, with 90% and 85% scores for adult and child occupant protection respectively.

All ZS EVs also feature a suite of driver assistance systems called ‘MG Pilot’, which includes active emergency braking with pedestrian and bicycle detection, lane-keeping assistance with lane-departure warning, traffic-jam assist, intelligent speed-limit assist and intelligent high-beam assist. Upgrade to either Trophy or Trophy Connect spec and you get rear cross-traffic alert and blind-spot monitoring with lane-change assistance as well.