Breaking: MG Limit Free Charging To 1000 Units Even For Early Bird Windsor Buyers | V3Cars

MG have recently revised the terms and conditions and are now limiting the free charging to 1,000 units or 1,000kWh, which is valid for only 12 months since the date of delivery. This means if an MG Windsor owner has already used more than 1000 units, then they will have to pay for charging the car in future. However, if they have only used, say, 500 units, then they will have another 500 units to charge the car.

1,000 units is an embarrassingly low number. Assuming a real-world range of 275km and 10% thermal inefficiencies during charging, you can expect the Windsor to deliver a mileage of 6.55kmpu. This means, MG expect you to drive only about 6,500km in a year and that’s low even by MG’s own estimates. According to the maintenance schedule in Windsor owner’s manual, they expect a typical Windsor customer to drive the car for about 15,000km per year. If they had to contain the losses, dropping it to 2,500 units would have been ideal as it would cover the needs of the majority of the Windsor owners who bought the car putting their faith in the brand.

From Trend Setter To Just Another Carmaker

When MG announced this unlimited free charging offer, we were sure there had to be something hiding in the terms and conditions. There had to be some terms and conditions or limit on charging. At the launch event of the car, we had to confirm the claims they were making on stage and MG’s top officials confirmed to V3Cars that there was no limit to the free charging offer.

For a while, it looked like MG were becoming the trend setters in the Industry. They forced Tata’s hand and got them to substantially drop the prices of the Tiago EV, Punch EV and Nexon EV. Tata even had to bring a 45kWh variant of the Nexon EV at the Windsor’s price and it offers a realistic range comparable with that of the Windsor.

They even put Tata Motors in a pickle and they had to offer free public charging with the Nexon EV and Punch EV. You can read more about it at the following link:

Get Free Public Charging With Tata Punch EV, Nexon EV (Just Like MG Windsor!)

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MG Bit More Than They Could Chew

It looked like a masterstroke. Because of the free charging, owners would use the car more than expected and this would lead to greater road presence for the car. Seeing the car on the road quite often is a sure fire way to start the chain reaction of sales. This is what helped the WagonR as it’s more visible on the road than the smaller Alto.

Assuming an average investment of Rs. 60,000 - 80,000 towards making the car more visible on the road, this is a fair, in fact, a genius marketing strategy. Please note that MG dispatched a little over 10,000 units of the Windsor to the dealers. However, not a lot of them were actually delivered.

According to a source, people within MG have been concerned about this promise of 1-year free unlimited public charging for a good while now. Therefore, they were actively holding back deliveries and giving longer delivery estimates to new customers. Judging by the consumption of electricity by initial owners must have scared the finance department so much that they had to resort to such tactics.

They probably didn’t give enough weight to the fact that — free fuel or not — people tend to drive their cars a whole lot more in the early months of ownership. I myself had covered 11,000km within 3 months with my Beat diesel back in 2014 and its average running fell back to the usual 1,000 - 1,500/month thereafter.

Buying Windsor? Wait For Better Discounts!

Since MG were getting the kind of demand for the Windsor, which would have looked crazy once you added up the electricity cost reimbursements, they probably thought they could withdraw the offer and hike the prices and still get the same traction. Some of it may have certainly been for the car itself but many buyers were also factoring in the cost benefit from the free charging offer. Considering that there are more electric vehicles landing on showroom floors, some of which are hoping to cross the chasm of product adoption, we should expect the demand for the Windsor to start drying up in the coming months.

The first sign of this demand weakening will be when the Windsor’s monthly dispatches drop below 3,000 units. Then, you can expect MG to either start offering discounts on the car. However, MG may start offering discounts on the Windsor sooner to allow a 3,000+ monthly dispatch and keep up the appearance of being a successful car, when in fact, it will be surviving on discounts.

Also Read: MG Windsor Gets Its First Price Hike In Jan 2025

No More Free Charging With MG Windsor 2025; BaaS Price Updated

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We have reached out to MG for an official statement on this matter and we’ll update this article if/when we get a response