• Pure-petrol or plug-in powertrains
• PHEV claims economy of up to 155.8mpg
• Mechanical components seem reliable

What are the running costs?

The HS offers fairly average fuel economy for a car of its class, and although this has improved slightly since launch in 2019, the standard 1.5-litre petrol is still some way short of reaching 40mpg according to the official WLTP figures. In real life you’ll be doing well to top 30mpg.

The manual gearbox is marginally more efficient than the auto on paper, despite the latter having an extra gear.

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The plug-in hybrid variant is potentially more useful if you need something economical, but only if you’re able to plug it in to charge routinely. Without doing this you won’t get anywhere near the claimed 150+mpg, and if you do a lot of faster motorway driving – where the hybrid assistance is less useful – in our experience you’re likely to end up with more like 40mpg.

There are better PHEV rivals, but not for so little money. Plus the low official CO2 figure means very cheap rates of Benefit-in-Kind company car tax.

View detailed mpg and CO2 figures on our MG HS specs page

Servicing and warranty

MG sells the HS with a seven-year warranty. However, the mileage limit is a relatively limited 80,000 miles rather than 100,000 miles offered by rivals. The first year includes unlimited mileage cover, but we’re not sure how many people will be troubling that.

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Service intervals for the MG HS are every 12 months or 15,000 miles, whichever comes sooner. Buyers can choose from a range of MG service plans to spread the cost of maintenance for up to seven years.

Reliability

MG’s cars aren’t particularly complicated by rival standards, and owners seem to be largely satisfied with their quality so far. That said. the HS is made in China – and past experience tells us this isn’t always synonymous with outstanding longevity. Still, the MG HS owner reviews on Parkers suggest things are going reasonably well at the moment.

We’ve already seen evidence of potential future failure points. The touchscreen in our plug-in hybrid test car failed completely, leaving us unable to access to a large number of vital functions. Thankfully, our car self-healed once it was parked overnight, but there are reports of some owners needing to have the screen replaced after similar faults.