As we have done for most of the last 25 Years, we drove from Brisbane to Melbourne and back for the Christmas new year period 2004/5. And as we have done for about the last 10 years we towed our caravan there and back.

But this time it was with a new car. A MG HS+EV, which is a plug in hybrid vehicle. That is, it runs on either or both an electric and or petrol motor.

Our previous car was a Subaru outback diesel. We bought it as a 3 year old, second hand car which had 180,000, on it. I was under the impression, at the time, that diesel engines easily could do a million kilometres. But at 350,000 kms it developed a noise in the engine which turned out to be a loose cam chain. Unfortunately Subaru in Australia had no cam chain guides. The alternative was to put in a second hand engine, but at over $7,000 that was going to be more than the car was worth. Hence we bought the MG.

I had wanted to purchase a second hand fully electric car for some time, and was waiting for the prices of them to come down. However because Australia is miles behind the rest of the world with electric cars and second-hand cars maintaining their prices because of Covid, that did not happen. I was also waiting for the infrastructure for non-home charging to catch up in Australia. That also has not happened.

Because we had to make a relatively quick decision, I decided to go half way and buy a hybrid car. These typical run on petrol but have a small electric motor and battery. The electric motor is used get the car initially moving and at slow speeds, because electric motors have ther maximum torque at very low turning speed. Then once moving, the petrol motor takes over to keep the car moving and to recharge the battery. If additional power is needed for going uphills or quicker acceleration both motors can be used. Pure hybrids have a better fuel consumption than traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) cars.

On further investigation I discovered there are also plug-in hybrid cars. These have a bigger battery and electric motor, and can be charged similar to fully electric cars. They have the benefit of being able to be charged with electricity which per km traveled cost less than petrol, because, CURRENTLY, ther is no excise on electricity.

One of the disadvantages of our old Diesel outback was that the particle filter kept on getting clogged up because we did, mostly, relatively short trips. Our new MG has a 66 km electric only range after which it can then run in Hybrid or Petrol only mode. More on that later on.

At the time of looking, ther were not too many plug-in electric hybrids. The MG had many features that were extras from other manufacturers and because the car we bought as a demo, was MY2022 (manufactured year 2022) we got about $8,000 off the going retail price.

It has a braked towing capacity of 1,500 kgs. Our caravan unloadened is about a thousand kilos.

It has a 1500 cc turbocharged petrol engine putting out 119 Kw of power and 250 Nm of torque. But the Electric motor puts out 90kw of power and 230 Nm of torque giving a combine out put of 189 Kw and 370 Nm

The combined torque is 20 Nm more than the diesel Subaru outback I had. I figured the MG would be a good car for towing. This proved to be only partially true.

Part of the haggling deal when we bought the car was that I got the tow bar and electric brake controller thrown in.

After signing up for the car, the dealerships said it would take about a week to get the towbar and brake controller fitted. As the rattle noise in the Subaru outback was getting progressively louder I decided to take possession of the MG and get the tow bar fited later. That happened after about 3 weeks.

I hitched up the caravan and took it for a short trip in the local area. It towed surprisingly well. On Elec only mode as well as Hybrid mode. However ther is no petrol only mode, so I was not able to test that.

Other than going on the coast road or back way, the trip from Brisbane to Melbourne requires going over the Toowoomba Range. On previous times we have done this in our Subaru outback, the engine had overheated, climbing to Cunningham Gap. Just in case this was going to happen in the new car, we decided to go a back way. But we missed the turn off. Hence we ended up going on the relatively new, Toowoomba bypass. This has some long steep climbs. The MG although towing almost 1 and a 1/2 ton, three people and luggage, handled it quite well. Of course it had to go down a few gears on the steep climbs.

When we left Brisbane I made sure the car was in Auto mode. Basically hybrid mode. My idea was to conserve the battery for travelling slowly through towns and initial takeoffs.

Somewhere on the second day of our trip even though I had the cruise control set at 90 kph, the car would eventually slow down to about 70. This would happen on slight uphill grades against a headwind.

This was when the battery was fully depleted and a yellow icon of a battery shows up near the battery capacity.

Switching off the cruse control I could maintain 90 but had to use a lot of peddle down on the accelerator. I noticed that the car would not change down gear when it was necessary, unless I put my foot flat to the floor. And then after picking up speed it would quickly change up gear so again losing speed when going up hills into a headwind.

I later discover this would not happen when the yellow battery icon was not on.

The owners manual said this about that icon: “This lamp will illuminate or flash when the high voltage battery charge is low. Where possible please charge the high voltage battery before this lamp enters the flashing stage”.

That's ok, if you are somewhere where you can charge it. But it does not explain why it causes the cruse control not to hold speed or the inability for the transmission to shift to a lower gear. It would seem to be that whoever wrote the software did not take into account, when the high voltage battery is flat. They seem to assume that the electric motor would be assisting the petrol motor at all times.

Because I was constantly towing a caravan, the car appeaed to be constantly using what was ever in the battery, to assist the petrol motor. So the petrol motor was not providing enough charge to the battery for when it was needed.

Ther is a setting, Battery Level Control, which is set to default every time the car is switched on, but can be set to medium or high. At one point, I change it to medium and after traveling some time the yellow battery icon disappeared. But none of the battery range appeared. Subsequently I had to change that setting to high, to get any battery range back.

It would appear, that no consideration had ever been taken to account, for towing, in the software of the vehicle.

I am of the understanding that some electric vehicles have a towing mode. This MG does not.

The way this works is a bit of a mystery. The text under it states “Control battery level according to driver behaviour”. If that were true, there wouldn't need to be a setting for it. It should say, how you would like the battery to be charged. Small medium or large amounts?

Even more text states “Medium high battery level can save energy for potential intensive driving or traffic jam”

On the return trip to Brisbane I had this switched on to high more often and found it put charge back into the battery. At one stage, I got 20 km of range added to the battery. Interestingly when I had reset the current trip, trip metre back to zero before setting the battery level control to high the electric kw usage per 100 KMs show a negative value. Which of course makes sense. But try explain that to a dihard ICE vehicle person.

In a bid to reduce the pathetic petrol fuel consumption, I tried to have the battery level control on Default when going up hills and on high when coming down hills. However this should not be necessary. The car has a built in electronic gyroscope which it uses for a number of functions. So the car knows if it is going up or down hill so should be able to switch the battery level control appropriately.

I assume that is not an added feature because, either no one thought of it or the software was already over budget.

Because I did not know the consequences of completly flattening the battery and not taking advantage of the battery recharging settings I went through a lot more fuel than I needed to.

The worst consumption I got when towing was about 20 Lt per 100 km. The best I got was about 12.

Compared to the diesel Subaru outback I had, where I averaged 10 Lt per hundred kilometers, driving 28,000 kilometers around Australia towing the same caravan.

Botton line, is that the MG plug in electric hybrid is not a ideal towing car. But that is not what it was designed for or why I bought it. But it can tow.

No matter what the previous fuel consumption I got, anytime on trip, on filling up, the range always showed about 414 Km. That range seemed to decrease at a flat rate as if it had nothing to do with the cars current fuel consumption. Then when I got to about a quarter of a tank or less it would dramatically drop. As an example, based on the range remaining, 150 km, we planed to get fuel at a town that was about 100 KMs away. When we were about 60 km away the range had dropped to 50 km and after a few more KMs it dropped to zero. Luckily ther was a petrol station at that point.

However the software is calculating the range, it is well off.

Our previous car, the Subaru outback, was able to far more accurately show its remaining range. Perhaps the MG is assuming, incorrectly, that it has a full or partial battery, to help with it fuel consumption. Or that it was to difficult, for the programer concerned, to work out.

In Australia at this time of year it can get very hot. Because the windows are not tinted when driving in certain directions at certain times of the day the sun is so intense that I can feel it burning my skin on my right arms and legs because I'm wearing shorts and a short sleeve tee shirt. I had to put on one sleeve of a long sleeve tee shirt to protect my right arm and leg from getting sunburnt and the potential of future shin cancer. Queensland is the top skin cancer place in the world.

At those same times the black dashboard and the top of the steering wheel where to hot to touch.

Because our previous car had tinted windows we did not notice this problem as much. Looks like we are going to have to get tinted windows installed on the MG

Otherwise the MG airconditioning did a very good job of keeping the cabin comfortable. I especially like that it operates without the engines being on.

Yes. Because the vast majority of our driving is not towing. It is driving down to the shops and back. That is all done via cheaper electric fuel.

The biggest saving is because the MG was the least expensive PEHV at the time. We bought the car for cash, so that is, and will be the biggest expense of owning it.

Most of these issues we have had with the car in relation to towing are software related. Could be solved by changing the software which could include a towing mode. Perhaps a future software update could do that. However knowing how the automotive industry has traditionally worked, I don't feel that is going to happen.

Lastly I like the car because of its technology, and I'm a technology geek.

Prior to writting this I watched a number of YouTube videos about plug-in electric hybrid cars towing. None of them mentioned that they would potentially not be enough power if the electric battery was completely flat and in that case the fuel consumption could be extremely high.

As I had to get a few minor things fixed on the car, I took it to the dealership, and explained the issue I had when towing. Other than supposedly upgrading the car to the latest software (the displayed version did not change) the feedback I got was that “the vehicle drives to manufacturers specifications”.

Even though the latest HS is currently not available in Australia as a plugin hybrid, the petrol model does have a towing mode option. I have no idea what that means other than a number of driver automation functions like dynamic cruise control can not be used in towing mode. That is not what I want.