Double test DS gives the 3 E-Tense a new powertrain. Is this premium crossover EV a better choice?
New powertrain DS3 much better but also better than MG ZS?
DS gives the 3 E-Tense a new powertrain. Is that enough to live up to premium pretensions? Or are you better off with a price fighter that takes you further on a full battery? And that price fighter is an MG ZS EV.
Why is it so important that the DS3 E-Tense continues on a full battery after the facelift?
As a manufacturer, you can decorate and decorate your electric cars as beautifully as you like, but what matters most with EVs is the range. How far can you get on a full battery? Only then do other things come into play. With the recent update of the 3 Crossback, DS shows where the priorities lie. In addition to a name change (the addition Crossback has been dropped) and a number of modest cosmetic adjustments, DS has particularly examined the electric powertrain and then completely revised it. Performance has improved, although that seems to be more bycatch. The main goal was to reduce consumption and at the same time increase the range. To get an idea of ​​what that means in practice, we compare the DS 3 E-Tense (that’s the full name of the electric version from now on) with another compact crossover with also 156 hp: the MG ZS EV. That MG has had a new powertrain before; it creates a bond.
What makes the DS3 E-Tense go further?
Until the update, DS supplied the electric 3 Crossback with the same modest electrical engineering as the other compact models of the former PSA group. However, new technology has been developed and is now being rolled out step by step across the various models, starting with the DS 3. The most important changes can be found in the engine and the battery pack. With the new battery, the amount of cobalt and manganese used has been reduced by half, while the capacity has also increased slightly, from net 47.5 kWh to 50.8 kWh. That’s the first win. Next comes from custom temperature management. As a result, the power peak at the start of the charging process is retained for longer, so that you can still charge the slightly larger battery just as quickly as before. At least as interesting is the new motor, which has more stator coils (the electromagnets) while the permanent magnets in the rotor are arranged slightly differently for a more effective magnetic field. This does not result in greater forces; the maximum torque is still 260 Nm. It does, however, provide more efficiency and therefore lower consumption. In addition, the torque curve flattens out less strongly at higher revs, so that the maximum power has increased from 136 to 156 hp.
156 hp, that’s how much the MG ZS EV has, right?
That’s right, the engine in the MG also peaks at 156 hp, at least the version in this comparison test. Initially, the MG ZS was only available with a 143 hp engine and 44.5 kWh battery pack. That is no longer the case. Since 2021, MG – unlike DS – has offered the ZS the choice of two different drive variants. Remarkably, the base model is the more potent of the two: 177 horsepower. Only in combination with a relatively modest battery capacity: 49 kWh, with which you should be able to travel 320 km according to the WLTP measurement. In this test we have the variant with the larger battery capacity of 68.3 kWh, which automatically means the 156 hp engine at MG. According to WLTP you should be able to get 440 km away with this. In our practice it stops after 326 km.
In this video we tell you more about the practice, but of course we also discuss the other aspects of the cars.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl