MG 5 vs Volkswagen ID.3: safety and reliability
The VW ID.3’s five-star Euro NCAP rating and generous amounts of standard kit on both cars puts them in good stead when it comes to safety
A maximum five-star safety rating was awarded to the ID.3 when it was crash-tested in 2020. Its 89% score in the child occupant protection category was the highest of any car tested that year, and it received similarly respectable 87% and 89% ratings for adult and child occupant protection respectively.
The ID.3 in Life trim like our test car gets a decent amount of safety kit, including LED headlights, adaptive cruise control, lane-keeping assistance and parking sensors. But Volkswagen offers plenty more as optional extras, such as autonomous emergency braking (AEB), lane-keeping assistance, a reversing camera and matrix LED headlights for superior visibility at night.
The MG 5, on the other hand, is too new to have gone through Euro NCAP’s battery of crash tests just yet. Thankfully, the marque’s other electric car – the ZS EV – achieved a full five-star rating with good scores in all categories from Euro NCAP, so hopefully the MG 5 will replicate those results in time.
Plus, as part of an update in 2021, the MG 5 received a suite of active safety and driver-assistance systems known as 'MG Pilot'. This incorporates active emergency braking, lane-keeping assistance, adaptive cruise control, traffic-jam assistance, high-beam assistance and speed-limit assistance.
One area where MG has plenty of room for improvement is customer satisfaction. Owner feedback in the 2021 Driver Power survey ranked the brand the lowest of 29 manufacturers included. VW didn’t cover itself in glory with a 17th place finish in the same poll, but it’s still significantly ahead of its rival here. At least the MG gets a lengthy seven-year/80,000-mile warranty, compared to the VW’s three years/60,000 miles of coverage.
