MG4 in Australia

[kiwi]

Fixed it for you.

 

[Corindikev]

[ Edit moderator: Corindikev posted the below which started a long off-topic discussion. I've moved it to the forum dedicated to such things. Topic drift will happen from time to time, that's fine, but let's try and keep the two topics (MG4 in Australia and Solar Energy Systems in Australia and Netherlands) separated. Thanks.

Solar energy systems in Australia and Netherlands

I got my extra 6.6kW solar system installed on Tuesday, well that is the theoretical maximum power of the panels but the inverter is 5kW maximum. So now I have a total of 8.6kW but a real maximum power out of the 2 inverters of just under 7kW. The monitoring system was not set up till Wednesday...

www.mgevs.com

]

Today I did my monthly 100% charge. It finished at 4:09pm & balanced till 4:35pm. The charge dropped from 6.6kW to 4.4kW until the last few minutes when it dropped to 0.02kW.

 

[wattmatters]

My meter will be on the BLNT3AL tariff as it is TOU and sends data at 30 minute intervals. I can see my energy use & feed kWh in on the Red Energy app the following day.

Just spoke with the Red Energy people about the same plan, as my current one (Powershop) is starting to look a bit sick. Was best for us last year but times change. The other best option for us up to now has been a Simply Energy NRMA plan but it comes with other caveats.

The most appealing part of the Red Energy plan is the daily fee is much lower than everyone else.

Seems the sign up for the EV version (the 2 hours free on each of Saturday and Sunday) is online only, while the phone rep is offering a $75 bill credit to sign up with him, but he can't do the EV plan. All other rates are the same.

Hmmm, during the free 4 hours on weekends I can at least guarantee the home battery gets a decent shot of juice (crank the charging rate up and pull ~7kW) while also getting some extra (~12 kWh over 2 hours) into the EV without concern. During sunny periods it's not that big of an advantage but on overcast days it will work well.

I just want to confirm Red Energy uses the same TOU periods as BLNT3AL metering as their advertised plans use the old BLNT3AU meter times which has a morning peak period.

I just did an interval analysis of the 12PM- 2PM interval for Saturday and Sundays.

Imports and Exports 12PM-2PM on Weekends

YEAR IMPORT KWH EXPORT KWH
2018 15.455 52.844 (installed Oct 2018)
2019 47.089 564.126
2020 68.194 517.173
2021 66.203 645.329
2022 37.398 585.101
2023 41.212 581.055
2024 20.479 21.521 (year to date)
---------------------------
Total 296.030 2967.149

Seems we actually import bugger all and have a fair bit of export in that 4-hour weekend window.

So we'd need to consume the 500-600 kWh of spare generation before benefiting from the free imports. That's about 1.5 kWh/weekend on average. For most of the above we did not have an EV nor the home battery, so adding load in that window should not be too challenging.

I just want to confirm Red Energy uses the same TOU periods as BLNT3AL metering as their advertised plans use the old BLNT3AU meter times which has a morning peak period.

Confirmed they do, so have now signed up. Bring on the weekend charging. It's worth up to 150km/week of range for no cost.

 

[wattmatters]

Finally got around to doing a test of using the MG4 V2L to charge our home battery. Made a video:



It's not something we'd likely need often, but in a prolonged grid outage event such as being experienced in parts of Victoria at the moment where many will be without grid power for days/weeks (or Nth QLD not so long back with the wild weather), then it most definitely can be useful.

 

[Corindikev]

AFAIK the MG V2L adaptor is limited to 10 amps output so at 218 volts that would be around 2.2 kW.

The Pecham adaptor I bought through Ali Express for $40.00 says it is rated at 32 Amps. I borrowed a 15 amp heavy extension cable from our SES shed & plugged in a 1 bar electric heater (1100 watts) & electric jug (2200 watts) & it handled that OK. I don't have the cables & connections to try any higher but I'm pretty happy that it handles 3.3 kW easily.

In the event of a major storm I'll just be happy to keep the fridge & freezer going & use the toaster & electric jug when required plus of course lights, radio, computers & TV so what I have tested will work fine for that.

 

[wattmatters]

In the event of a major storm I'll just be happy to keep the fridge & freezer going & use the toaster & electric jug when required plus of course lights, radio, computers & TV so what I have tested will work fine for that.

The car will do that easily.

For us because I am powering two homes + shed, then just providing some top up energy for the off-grid battery is perfect. That system can supply 8 kW.

We will get a big storm again in the region, just a matter of when not if.

 

[wattmatters]

Had my first emergency brake activation today. Was just pulling out from a regular street-side parallel park and was about half way out when it slammed on the brakes. I can only guess it thought oncoming traffic in the other lane was a threat.

 

[Corindikev]

I had my first emergency brake this week also. I was driving down a suburban street in South Grafton and I saw a lady walk out from the footpath behind her car and walk up to the drivers door to get in. The car slammed the brakes on but I am not sure if she had begun to open the door or not at the time.

I was watching the whole time and I was ready if anything was likely to happen but the car's system decided to err on the side of caution and braked. I figured it did what it did correctly. I am pretty observant but a lot of drivers are not. The car could not distinguish whether the person was about to walk in to its path or not so took the conservative approach assuming the worst scenario and acted accordingly.

My take was the car did the right thing from a programming perspective but has no AI built in to make judgement calls as a human could.

There are plenty of stupid drivers on the road who do not think ahead and would likely have hit this person had she decided to start walking out to the middle of the road.

 

[Rolfe]

I had my first emergency brake this week also. I was driving down a suburban street in South Grafton and I saw a lady walk out from the footpath behind her car and walk up to the drivers door to get in. The car slammed the brakes on but I am not sure if she had begun to open the door or not at the time.

I was watching the whole time and I was ready if anything was likely to happen but the car's system decided to err on the side of caution and braked. I figured it did what it did correctly. I am pretty observant but a lot of drivers are not. The car could not distinguish whether the person was about to walk in to its path or not so took the conservative approach assuming the worst scenario and acted accordingly.

My take was the car did the right thing from a programming perspective but has no AI built in to make judgement calls as a human could.

There are plenty of stupid drivers on the road who do not think ahead and would likely have hit this person had she decided to start walking out to the middle of the road.

Mine did exactly the same thing last May. I forgave it.

 

[wattmatters]

Problem I had was I asked the wife if she wanted to do a bit of a practice drive. She's an inexperienced driver and has been using our other car and has only driven the MG once before for a brief run. She needs time to adapt and wants me in the car with her for that period.

I'm angling towards becoming a one car household. The old Golf works fine and goes like the clappers but is getting more expensive to keep. I have it well maintained and things that are broken get fixed. It's at that stage of life where door locks stop working, that sort of thing. At least the CarPlay works well!

Then we had the emergency braking incident this morning and I got a firm "no" to doing a practice drive. "Don't want no AI scaring the crap out of me". lol

The one car household will have to wait a bit longer I think.

 

[MozFromOz]

Hi fellow Aussie MG4 owners. My vehicle was delivered with software version R04. What versions are others on? Does anyone know what the latest version available in Australia is? I'm finding lots of bugs in R04.

 

[kiwi]

@MozFromOz NZ owner here. Vehicle delivered in Dec 2023 came with R11.

 

[wattmatters]

Hi fellow Aussie MG4 owners. My vehicle was delivered with software version R04. What versions are others on? Does anyone know what the latest version available in Australia is? I'm finding lots of bugs in R04.

Sept delivery, have the same but honestly I don't think the version of the Infotaiment system really tells us much more than what version the infotainment system is using.

There are so many other systems in the car and differences between models that I don't think we can really know what software versions our cars are running.

 

[wattmatters]

Problem I had was I asked the wife if she wanted to do a bit of a practice drive.

We got over the emergency braking experience and wifey had a drive today. She quite enjoyed it. "Smooth" she says.

Meanwhile I'm still gripping things tight and ready to take corrective action if needed. Still on her red Ps.

She thinks she's going to be giving me a rest when we next drive to Sydney and she does a section. lol

Annoyingly, the LKA only did one minor (unnecessary) correction while there were plenty of occasions I was wishing it would do its job! I wanted her to experience this, get used to the car operating in default mode because mucking about with control screens is not her gig.

 

[Corindikev]

Mine was an early import and delivered on 14 September 2023. There are a few niggles with software but certainly no show stoppers. I have never even looked at what version I have.

I turn LKA off or if I leave it on I drive in the middle of the lane which does take a bit more concentration, but isn't that what it is supposed to do?

No real complaints from me. Software lag is probably the only real issue but it is only like 1/4 of a second or less so it is no bother. To me it is Caveat Emptor. Do more detailed checks and research before committing your hard earned.

I know people who have bought a car purely on the colour with no knowledge of anything else except it looks nice.

 

[PeterM]

Hi fellow Aussie MG4 owners. My vehicle was delivered with software version R04. What versions are others on? Does anyone know what the latest version available in Australia is? I'm finding lots of bugs in R04.

Software versions are a tricky topic. There are lots of systems in the car with their own software/firmware.
What you're looking at on the infotainment screen is merely a subset. The general consensus seems to be:
Excite variants - R05
Essence variants - R11
Another test is to turn on ACC and see what a short-press of the left up/down button does. If it increments by 1km/h it's running a newer version, if it increments by 5km/h it's running older software.

I saw mention on the MG4 owners facebook group that there is supposedly another update available now which improves the false AEB events, but there was no specific details on a campaign or bulletin number.

 

[davethomasson]

Sept delivery, have the same but honestly I don't thing the version of the Infotaiment system really tells us much more than what version the infotainment system is using.

There are so many other systems in the car and differences between models that I don't think we can really know what software versions our cars are running.

Infotainment wise I believe R11 is the latest in Australia. @wattmatters - I think you are right about other systems and software versions but I was advised by an MG software engineer that a lot of them interface with the Infotainment system in terms of operation. This makes sense to me in terms of the relevance on the Infotainment version. I was perplexed why the Infotainment version was important before that advice!

 

[JoeBlow]

Another test is to turn on ACC and see what a short-press of the left up/down button does. If it increments by 1km/h it's running a newer version, if it increments by 5km/h it's running older software.

I can confirm that this test just reinforces @wattmatters comment in relation to there being many pieces of software all with different versions so no clear way to know if you are updated or not.

We got the R11 update, with the bug fixes around timezones and some shortcuts for LKA etc. Carplay improvements. But still have 5kph increments on the cruise control.

Also still no issues with phantom braking etc either, so the version of all that is a big unknown.

Even getting into the engineering menu doesn't reveal much info that helps ascertain any of this.

 

[MozFromOz]

Thanks guys. I've accessed the hidden menu identified elsewhere in the forum's and have screenshots of all the versions now. I expect that when I get the R11 update there will be a whole bunch of others. Will report back.

 

[wattmatters]

I just want to confirm Red Energy uses the same TOU periods as BLNT3AL metering as their advertised plans use the old BLNT3AU meter times which has a morning peak period.

Confirmed they do, so have now signed up. Bring on the weekend charging. It's worth up to 150km/week of range for no cost.

So the welcome pack for the EV plan arrives....

Red Energy agent I spoke with is pretty sure my tariff assignment and TOU will be correct, and it is the welcome pack in error. But we are not going to know until data starts coming in. So they have scheduled a follow up call once we have data coming through and we can validate.