MG Comet EV: Long-term Report (1,000 Km Update)

1000km in India’s most affordable electric car led to some new revelations about the Comet EV

Our traffic infested roads have never felt easier to navigate. Thanks to the MG Comet EV’s dimensions that shrink around you, I’ve fallen in love with city driving. So much so that I put over 1,000km on our long termer Comet EV in the span of a month and a half. In the process, a couple of new revelations came to light and that’s what we are going to talk about today.

Handle With Care

The Comet EV makes use of a dual tone interior theme, but the majority of the colours used are light in nature. So while that does create a sense of space inside the cabin, it is also a pain to maintain. In the short duration we’ve had the car, the seat and door fabrics have already started to pick up some grime. 

Stains are inevitable in a cabin, but you have to be a tad more careful when it comes to the Comet. So if you’ve got kids or pets, you will have to keep some funds aside to get a periodic interior washdown. 

City King

We’ve already mentioned that driving the Comet is a cakewalk in the city in our previous report. But there’s something other than its compact dimensions that help it in that aspect.

Blind spots are a real troublemaker in really congested situations. Not with the Comet though. Step inside the cabin of the Comet EV and the first thing you’re bound to notice is the depth of visibility on offer. You sit high, the dashboard sits low, and you’ve got a huge windscreen offering an uninterrupted view ahead. 

The usual blind spots are nullified, courtesy of the humongous side windows and the airplane-styled rear windows. So you never have to worry about something (mostly two-wheelers) popping out of nowhere.

Learning curve

Driving the Comet EV requires you to relearn your driving instincts a bit. For starters, setting off in the Comet is a matter of just two very simple steps: foot on the brake, rotate the drive selector into D (drive), and you’re good to go. That’s it. Naturally, it takes a few attempts for your brain to rewire so that you don’t search for a start/stop push button every time you get in the Comet.

The steering weight is the lightest of any car I’ve driven to date. Anything else after the Comet feels like a workout for the arms. You’ll love this steering trait in the city, not so much on the highways. But then it isn’t really intended to be on the latter for prolonged periods of time.

Now, the power figures (42 PS and 110 Nm) aren’t impressive to begin with. However, the instantaneous nature of the electric powertrain means you won’t find it underpowered in the city. We noticed that the Comet's electric motors don’t produce full power (in Normal mode) after the battery goes below 50%. 

The output drops to around 34PS, and while it is still adequate enough for city usage, overtakes do then require a bit more calculation. A simple solution is to put it in Sports mode, where you again get access to the full output potential.

A bizarre incident

The Comet made me believe in ghosts, literally. Well, anyone would, if a car window shatters in front of them despite the car simply resting in a corner. That’s exactly what happened with our Comet. Parked right in front of the office, the rear window of the Comet cracked up one fine day without any contact whatsoever. 

A quick explanation from my well informed colleague, Nabeel shooed off the ghost scares. Please bear with the brief lecture: because the car was under the scorching sunlight, it made the cabin of the Comet very hot. As the shadow of the nearby building started to fall on the rear glass, the quick temperature difference could have resulted in uneven contraction and aggravated a pre-existing crack or defect, causing the glass shatter. 

Bizarre indeed. Something like this shouldn’t ideally happen, and we still don’t know the exact reason for it. MG is yet to comment on this and we hope something like this doesn’t happen to anyone else as it is indeed a serious safety concern. 

That being said, such occurrences aren’t uncommon particularly in hotter parts of the country, especially during the summers, as extremely high temperatures inside a cabin (car cabins can heat up to 50 degrees Celsius or more) or sudden changes in temperature (blast chilling a hot cabin, causing a sudden change in temperature) can lead to even tempered glass cracking or shattering.

Kitna deti hai?

While this subheading is not to be taken seriously, we drove the Comet EV from a full charge to absolute 0 percent for an episode of ‘Drive2Death’ on ZigWheels. The test revealed that the Comet EV will deliver a range of 182km in the real world. It involved our usual mileage test route, which includes both high and low speed sections. It was driven in Eco mode with regen set to full, and you can watch the full video here. 

In our use case, it seems like the Comet EV will deliver a similarish range (of around 180km on a full charge). Do note that the range varies highly depending on the drive and regen mode being used.

A few niggles

We’d mentioned a few issues with the Comet EV in our introductory report – the steering-mounted controls not working and uneven AC cooling levels. Those irks have been fixed by MG when the car went for its periodic service. But it seems like the steering-mounted controls glitching wasn’t an issue limited to our unit, as we found other journalists facing a similar issue as well.

So, after more than 1000km, the MG Comet EV has proved its mettle as a city commuter. We still have quite some time left with it and I’m looking forward rather happily to spend more time with it. In the next report, we’ll take a look at the things that the MG Comet could’ve done better.

Positives: Ease of use in city, Predictable 180km range

Negatives: White interiors are hard to maintain, Flimsy rear windows

Date When Received: 2 January 2023

Kilometres When Received: 30km

Kilometres Till Now: 1200km