MG4 EV Urban review
The MG4 Urban offers even better value for money than the original MG4, something we thought could be impossible
Our opinion on the MG4 Urban
When it comes to value for money, the all-new MG4 Urban embarrasses the competition. From less than £23,500, this smart-looking family hatchback offers more space than some mid-size SUVs, all the equipment you are likely to need as standard, a decent amount of range and an interior that doesn’t make you feel like you’re stuck in the cheap seats. It’s so good, in fact, that the original MG4, which once seemed unbeatable value, now feels a bit redundant - unless you really need its longer range.
About the MG4 Urban
Four years after it was launched, the MG4 remains one of the best-value EVs on the market. In fact, the sharp-looking, fun-to-drive and well-equipped hatchback offers such incredible bang for your buck we named it the Auto Express Affordable Electric Car of the Year in 2023, and car buyers clearly agreed with us as almost 50,000 examples have been sold in the UK alone.
However, the MG4 has now been overshadowed by this: the all-new MG4 Urban. The name suggests it’s a city car born to scythe through the congested streets of our city centres, but it’s actually another family hatchback that’s cheaper than the original MG4 ever was. At the same time, it’s bigger and more practical, measuring nearly 4.4 metres long and boasting an enormous 577 litres of boot space.
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Effectively, this car offers more space than some mid-size SUVs, including the Nissan Qashqai, for the same price as a Toyota Yaris supermini – a tad under £23,500 to be exact.
In case you’re wondering, the original MG4 is sticking around and has been updated for 2026 with a brand-new, higher-quality interior featuring slicker tech. The MG4 Urban has an almost identical interior design but otherwise, despite wearing the same name, these cars are completely different. They even use different platforms and powertrains, with the new model focusing on cost effectiveness and providing what MG thinks is just the right-size of battery.
MG4 Urban prices and latest deals
Prices for the MG4 Urban officially start from less than £23,500, which makes it among the cheapest electric cars on sale today, putting it within spitting distance of the charming Renault 5 and Nissan Micra supermini twins, plus the talented Citroen e-C3 Aircross.
However at the time of writing, customers are being offered a generous £1,500 discount on the MG4 Urban, reducing the starting price to £21,995 and increasing the value for money to a frankly unbeatable level. It’s also available on 0% APR finance with £0 minimum deposit.
The headline price is for the Comfort Standard Range model which offers 201 miles of range from a 41.9kWh (usable) battery. Next up, for just under £25,500, is the Comfort Long Range which gets a larger 52.8kWh (usable) powerpack that ups the range to a more useful 258 miles. Finally at close to £28,000, the Premium Long Range gets the same battery and range but adds more luxuries like a 360-degree camera and heated seats.
The MG4 Urban isn’t available to order through the Auto Express Buy A Car service just yet, but if you’re considering one you can sell your old car with us.
Electric motor, drive and performance
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Underneath, the MG4 Urban is based on the brand’s next-generation E3 architecture which focuses on maximising cabin space, efficiency and cost effectiveness. That’s why it has a front-wheel drive layout, not a rear-wheel drive one like the original MG4, and features a simpler torsion-beam suspension setup at the rear.
MG has utilised ‘cell-to-body’ construction that, supposedly, helped reduce the car’s weight – the MG4 Urban apparently weighs 200kg less than the other, smaller MG4 – while also increasing torsional rigidity.
| Model | Power | 0-62mph | Top speed |
| MG4 Urban Comfort Standard Range | 148bhp | 9.6 seconds | 99mph |
| MG4 Urban Comfort Long Range | 158bhp | 9.5 seconds | 99mph |
Performance, 0-60mph acceleration and top speed
The MG4 Urban produces either 148bhp or 158bhp from its front-mounted electric motor, depending on the model you go for, plus a healthy 250Nm of torque, which is enough for leisurely acceleration up to motorway speed. We particularly like the smooth wave of torque you feel when you put your foot down, but at times we did notice a faint whine coming from the e-motor, but that’s a flaw of most front-wheel drive EVs.
Town driving, visibility and parking
As you’d hope for a car with the name Urban, it’s easy to drive around town, thanks in part to an expansive windscreen and short bonnet that make it easy to place on the road. Plus there’s a proper one-pedal driving mode for the regenerative braking to help make stop-start traffic less stressful and it doesn’t take too long to bring the car to a stop when you lift off the throttle. If you’re not a fan of the one-pedal, there are four other regenerative braking levels – low, medium, high and adaptive – which you can toggle between using a button on the steering wheel.
Country road driving and handling
A selling point of the original, rear-drive MG4’s is how surprisingly enjoyable it is on a twisty British B-road, and if you want an EV that’s fun to drive you’ll want to focus your attention on that car. That’s not to say the MG4 Urban is bad on an open road, but there’s some body roll when you chuck it into a corner and we’d prefer it if the weighting of the steering was more natural.
More noticeable is that there’s not much feel to the brake pedal when you first press it, then applying a bit more pressure sharply engages the physical brakes. Clearly there’s still work to be done here to smooth the transition between the regen and physical braking systems.
Motorway driving and long-distance comfort
Perhaps the biggest weak point of the MG4 Urban is the jiggly ride, which makes the car feel like it's constantly fidgeting. It’s not uncomfortable but we just wish the car was able to settle down. What’s more, when you go over a large pothole – of which there are many littering UK roads – the suspension sends a loud thump through the cabin. Some road noise also makes its way in, but not enough that you couldn’t cover it up with the radio.
“The MG4 Urban might not be as much fun to drive on a twisty road as the original MG4, or similarly priced rivals like the Renault 5, but for most people who buy this car that won’t matter and it’s still decent to drive, in or out of town.” - Ellis Hyde, news reporter.
Range, charging & running costs
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The MG4 Urban doesn’t just feature different sizes of batteries to those in the ‘classic’ MG4, its units use a cost-effective LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate) chemistry, similar to other affordable EVs like the Citroen e-C3 and the forthcoming Skoda Epiq.
In China, this car is available with semi-solid-state batteries which could be a game-changer for the brand’s electric cars as they have the potential to be smaller, lighter, more energy-dense and even less volatile than other types of powerpacks. However, MG doesn’t know if or when this technology will be coming to our shores.
Electric range, battery life and charge time
The MG4 Urban is available with either a 41.9kWh ‘Standard Range’ battery good for up to 201 miles on a charge or a 52.8kWh ‘Long Range’ unit that offers up to 258 miles of range. Both those figures are a close match for the similarly priced Renault 5 and Nissan Micra, which are good for between around 190 and 250 miles on a charge depending on the exact model. Meanwhile, the new Skoda Epiq is set to offer up to 267 miles of range.
We tested a top-of-the-range MG4 Urban Premium Long Range and managed to average 3.9mi/kWh efficiency across a mixture of roads, with the regenerative braking either in one-pedal mode or its next strongest setting. It’s not the highest efficiency figure we’ve ever seen from a budget EV, but nevertheless equates to a real-world range of about 210 miles from the 52.8kWh battery.
In case you’re wondering, the other MG4 offers between 280 and 338 miles of range, depending on the model, thanks to large batteries that use the more energy-dense NMC (Nickel Manganese Cobalt) chemistry. So if you do long journeys regularly or don’t want to be charging your car as often, that may be the one to go for.
If you find a DC rapid charger capable of delivering 150kW or more, a 10 to 80 per cent top-up in the MG4 Urban will take about half an hour, the same as it does in a Renault 5.
| Model | Battery size | Range | Insurance Group |
| MG4 Urban Comfort Standard Range | 41.9kWh | 201 miles | TBC |
| MG4 Urban Comfort Long Range | 52.8kWh | 258 miles | TBC |
Insurance groups
Insurance ratings for the MG4 Urban haven’t been confirmed yet, but we expect they’ll be about the same as for the original MG4, which means it’s not going to be the cheapest EV in the world to insure. The Vauxhall Frontera and Citroen e-C3 will certainly cost less, as they sit in insurance groups 14 or 15 (out of 50), meanwhile the Renault 5 falls in groups 18 to 22.
Tax
Like all electric cars, the MG4 Urban attracts a £195 annual rate of Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) or ‘road tax’. At the time of writing, the Benefit-in-Kind (BiK) company car tax rate for EVs is 3%, but it will increase to 4% in April for the 2026/27 financial year.
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Interior, design & technology
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The MG4 Urban swaps the dramatic lines and sharp nose of its sibling for a softer, less aggressive look. Apparently the designers took inspiration from the MG Cyberster sports car, which you can tell in certain places, like the oddly-shaped tail-lights which are supposed to resemble the Union Jack flag, the same as the drop-top’s.
We think this a relatively smart-looking car, but not as much of a head-turner as the original MG4 and it also has an uncanny resemblance to the Ford Puma, which you can’t unsee as soon as someone points it out. Base Comfort models get 16-inch alloy wheels, while top-spec Premium cars ride on a set of 17-inch rims.
Interior and dashboard design
MG’s new interior design represents a major leap forward in both onboard tech and quality compared to what the original MG4 offered before it was updated. We first saw this layout in the MGS5 and MGS6 SUVs that arrived in 2025 and it incorporates a large, rather impressive central touchscreen with a slim bank of physical dials and buttons for the climate control plus other key functions just below. A big driver’s display is located behind MG’s familiar, slightly square steering wheel, which also has physical buttons and joysticks.
The MG4 Urban doesn't have a rotary gear selector on its centre console like the brand’s other products, instead opting for a column-mounted lever which we found was much better to use. That said, there are no controls for the headlights on the left-hand stalk – you’re forced to use the touchscreen to adjust them.
Materials and build quality
There is a lot of hard black scratchy plastic in this interior, specifically on the top of the dashboard, the doors and the centre console. We can forgive that considering how affordable this car is, the fact that pretty much every small electric car features a fair amount of plastic trim and that perceived quality overall is reasonably impressive.
What’s more, there are some squidgy materials dotted around the cabin, like the leather alternative across the dashboard and some metal-effect trim. Build quality seemed solid in our test car, with no squeaks or rattles coming from any of the trim, which was an issue we did have with the original MG4 when we tested it.
Infotainment, sat-nav and stereo
Every MG4 Urban comes with a sharp 12.8-inch touchscreen and a seven-inch digital driver’s display, plus wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are standard. The car also features MG’s latest infotainment software which looks a lot nicer than the previous iteration, but does require you to navigate through menu after menu to adjust certain settings.
Occasionally it took two or three taps before the screen in our test car responded but at least MG has taken advantage of having that large central display and made all the on-screen shortcut buttons and toggle switches big and easy to hit while you’re driving.
The MG4 Urban also features two customisable buttons on its steering wheel which in our test car were programmed to switch between the drive modes and adjust the strength of the regenerative braking. Oddly however, activating the one-pedal driving mode has to be done via one of the many menus on the touchscreen.
The driver’s display uses small, thin text and icons for everything apart from your speed. This can make it hard to read the information like range or what drive mode you’re in at a glance, especially the regen braking strength, which is a tiny icon tucked into the right-hand corner of the screen.
“While I have to applaud MG for fitting proper physical climate controls - something which more than a few manufacturers have yet to return to - I can’t understand why it decided to put the headlight controls on the touchscreen rather than on one of the stalks behind the steering wheel!” - Ellis Hyde, news reporter.
Boot space & practicality
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The MG4 Urban is a family hatchback but it’s priced like a supermini or a small SUV, giving it a huge advantage over the competition when it comes to practicality. That includes 30 litres worth of storage cubbies spread throughout the cabin, including the large tray located underneath the centre console.
Dimensions and size
Despite what the name suggests, the MG4 Urban is about 110mm longer than the original MG4, and its wheelbase is 45mm longer too. This provides considerably more space for rear-seat passengers and increases the luggage capacity. Measuring nearly 4.4 metres long, the Urban is also bigger than most other family hatchbacks, but close in size to the Vauxhall Frontera and Citroen e-C3 Aircross SUVs.
| Model | MG4 Urban | MG4 EV | Volkswagen ID.3 |
| Length | 4,395mm | 4,287mm | 4,264mm |
| Width | 1,842mm | 1,836mm | 1,809mm |
| Height | 1,549mm | 1,516mm | 1,568mm |
| Wheelbase | 2,750mm | 2,705mm | 2,710mm |
| Boot space | 577 litres | 388 litres | 385 litres |
Seats & passenger space
The difference in interior space between the MG4 and MG4 Urban doesn’t sound like a lot on paper, but we had a chance to compare the two side-by-side and those extra millimetres really do result in a lot more space for passengers in the back. There’s just enough space in the back of the regular MG4 for six-foot tall adults to sit, whereas the MG4 Urban offers them acres of legroom to spread out in. Headroom is good, too. There’s space under the front seats for people’s feet and two sets of Isofix child-seat mounting points in the back.
Boot space
The enormous 577-litre boot in this car doesn’t just dwarf the 388 litres you get in the other MG4, it’s significantly bigger than almost all its rivals we can think of, from the Renault 5 and Citroen e-C3 Aircross to the Volkswagen ID.3. The Ford Puma Gen-E comes closest, with its 556-litre boot.
The MG4 Urban’s luggage capacity is, in fact, almost the same size as you get in a Kia Sportage, although that 577-litre figure does include 98 litres of storage under the boot floor. That space is ideal for the charging cables (which take up just a fraction of the room) and if you need to lug larger items around, lowering the rear seats gives you 1,364 litres to play with.
Reliability & safety
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The MG4 Urban received the maximum five-star crash safety rating from Euro NCAP when it was tested last year, but more impressive than that is that it managed to outscore the Volkswagen ID.3 in the adult occupant, vulnerable road user, and safety assistance categories. The only other category is child occupant, which the MG was just 2% behind the VW in.
All versions of MG4 Urban feature a long list of safety and driver-assistance systems, including autonomous emergency braking (AEB) with pedestrian and cyclist detection, blind-spot detection, driver attention alert and lane-keep assist, to name just a few.
If you prefer not having to deal with any of that stuff when you’re behind the wheel, you can create a personalised profile for the Advanced Driver Assistance System suite that can be activated from a pull-down menu on the touchscreen. Unfortunately, and rather infuriatingly, you can’t activate it while you’re driving – you have to be parked.
MG offers a reassuring seven-year/80,000-mile warranty for all of its models and this includes the battery pack, guaranteeing repairs or replacement if the capacity drops below 70 per cent during the warranty period. This should offer owners better peace of mind than Volkswagen’s three-year/60,000-mile coverage and is almost a match for Kia’s seven-year/100,000-mile policy.
Unfortunately, MG still struggles to perform in our Driver Power owner satisfaction survey, coming stone dead last yet again in the best manufacturer rankings and only one of its models made it onto our list of the best cars to own as well. That car was the Mk1 MG HS and it finished in 21st place.
| Euro NCAP safety ratings | |
| Euro NCAP safety rating | Five stars (2025) |
| Adult occupant protection | 87% |
| Child occupant protection | 85% |
| Vulnerable road user protection | 85% |
| Safety assist | 80% |
Buying and owning
Best buy: MG4 Urban Premium Long Range
It’s not often we’d recommend springing for a top-of-the-range model, however, the MG4 Urban Premium Long Range only costs £27,995, which is less than an entry-level Peugeot E-208 or Vauxhall Corsa Electric. For that you get, not just the bigger battery and more than 250-miles’ range, but all the kit MG can throw at this car. The list includes heated front seats, a heated steering wheel, a wireless charging pad, ambient lighting and a 360-degree camera.
Alternatives
Its combination of vast space and very budget-friendly price results in the MG4 Urban challenging superminis, hatchbacks and family-friendly SUVs. In terms of price, the MG4 Urban’s closest competitors are electric superminis like the Renault 5, Nissan Micra, Hyundai Inster, Vauxhall Corsa Electric and Citroen e-C3.
But in terms of space, it’s on par with full-size hatchbacks like the Volkswagen ID.3 or affordable SUVs from the Citroen e-C3 Aircross and Vauxhall Frontera to even our reigning Car of the Year, the Skoda Elroq.
Frequently Asked Questions
The MG4 Urban is a very impressive electric family car, even before you consider how affordable it is and the frankly incredible value for money it offers.
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