Just imagine if a couple of decades ago you’d said that MG’s most powerful car would be a hybrid SUV? It would have seemed pretty shocking, but well, here we are, with the HS PHEV being the brand’s latest battery-assisted model as it targets 50 per cent of its sales to be electrified before the end of the year.The HS is MG’s largest model, rivalling the likes of the Nissan Qashqai and Ford Kuga, and arrived in dealers towards the end of 2019, but solely with a lacklustre petrol engine that proved thirsty to run. Can this new plug-in option prove to be the powertrain the HS always needed, though? Let’s find out.
So, you guessed it, all that’s really new here is what’s under the surface, with this electrified HS being the first plug-in hybrid model from MG, though it sits alongside the fully electric ZS EV and MG5 models.Bringing greater long-distance flexibility than an EV, but still with the ability to run on electricity for a decent number of miles, it joins an ever-growing range of plug-in hybrid SUVs, including the Ford Kuga PHEV and Vauxhall Grandland X Hybrid.