MG Cyberster GT Long Term review

The answer to the above question is… well, just alright, really. We’ve been seeing a fairly steady 2.6 miles/kWh, while the real-world range has been around 170 miles in solid motorway use, or it’ll tickle up towards 200 in slower driving on more local roads. I reckon you’ll see it reach around 230-ish miles per charge in the summer. That’s not brilliant for a car with a claimed range of 276 miles, but it’s not unusual for an EV with this sort of performance and weight, either. Provided you charge mostly at home (which I do), it’s still only around 3p per mile – or 9p if I charge in daytime hours. Vastly cheaper to fuel than an equivalent petrol sports car, so in that regards I really can’t argue!

But, of course, a middling range means more rapid charging for the longer journeys, and that does make things a bit more expensive. I paid 94p/kWh at a Shell Recharge station at one point, which is 36p per mile in the Cyberster!! Ouch. Thankfully I don’t rely on rapid charging too often, so even taking into account the odd hugely overpriced rapid charge, I reckon I’m still paying around 6p per mile as an average over the 1600 miles I’ve done in the MG so far. Roughly speaking, that’s about a quarter of what an equivalent petrol sports car would cost to fuel.

The charging stuff

As for charging? Well, the MG has a 150kW peak rapid charging speed, which is absolutely fine, if nothing exceptional in a world where 800V ultra-rapid charging is becoming more common. I’ve not really seen anything close to the 150kW claimed speed, though. Even when I’ve plugged into a 350kW rapid charger with the MG’s battery on 20% or so and having given the car the opportunity to pre-heat the battery for optimum charging, it tends to dribble over about 100kW for a few minutes before dropping back down to a fairly steady 65kW. Could be better, to be honest!