Chinese-owned British brand MG is set to launch its cheapest electric car yet – having just launched the £23,495 MG4 Urban – with an MG2 arriving later this year. Our exclusive renderings show how the new MG2 might look.
With a raft of new, affordable all-electric superminis arriving over the next 12 months such as the Renault Twingo, MG won’t be left out. A new MG2 will slot into the range beneath the MG4 Urban, meaning a starting price that could be around the £20,000 mark.
Now, MG design boss Jozef Kaban, has confirmed that the MG2 will be something special that will “make you smile.”
While other MG team members have spoken more openly about the potential for an MG2, Kaban wouldn’t be drawn on the name of the new small car, but he did say: “It’s going to be a good-looking car. And from the outside and inside, it’s a car that you will recognise as being authentic as an MG. I think the family is going to be proud.
“We are waiting for a small baby, but I think the parents are already a little bit proud.”
MG has a design centre in London’s Marylebone, which Kaban says has “lots of great young designers” and visits frequently. It’s expected that the team there will have played a role in the design of the MG2, alongside their colleagues at MG’s design studio in Shanghai.
The MG2 is likely to make use of the new E3 electric platform debuted on the MG4 Urban. This new front-wheel drive architecture offers two batteries in the MG4 Urban: 43kWh, which claims a 201-mile range, and 54 kWh that claims 258 miles. Even with the smaller battery in the smaller MG2, you can expect a range of probably around 220 miles – ideal for a small, affordable city car.
Kaban – whose MG-owning friends helped him to understand the brand when he joined the brand nearly two years ago (with one of them subsequently buying a Cyberster) – is enjoying the speed at which the Chinese-owned brand works, with his influence already making it through to cars like the new MG4 Urban.
However, Kaban’s biggest splash with MG was with the MG Cyber X compact SUV, first shown at the Shanghai motor show last year, and also putting in an appearance at the Goodwood Festival of Speed here in the UK.
Although non-committal, Kaban is still keen for the Cyber X to see the light of day, and he was buoyed by the reaction to the car at Goodwood.
“I think there’s room in my garage,” he said. “I think it will be good and it makes sense.
“We had lots of small cards at Goodwood, that people were writing about the Cyber X and it was nice to go through. I spent some evenings just reading them and it was lovely. It was great. Therefore, we might surprise as well in that direction.”
Kaban also hinted that MG’s Cyber models could sit slightly separately from the rest of the range, as the more premium IM5 and IM6 cars do.
“This could be great thinking,” he said. “There could be possibilities because we started to analyse our position in the global world. And as humanity, we are living in different continents, and we are in many things very similar. But even then we are so diverse, so different. And being in over 100 countries delivering the cars, for us it might make sense to not try to just make sweet or salty, but to bring sweet and salty, to bring two worlds.
“Cyber can stand for something, maybe something a little bit out of the traditional, a little bit unexpected. Therefore, yeah, I see opportunity and I believe that this could be one of the scenarios that we can think about.”
