VW ID.3 vs Renault Megane E-Tech vs MG4: Which Electric Hatchback?

Renault's £28,445 already has the £3,750 grant taken off. MG's £30,495 has nothing taken off, because no MG of any kind appears in either band of the government's eligible list. So putting those two numbers side by side understates the gap by the full value of the grant. Whether that matters to you on a lease depends on how the funder treats the grant, which is a question worth asking before you compare anything, and one we can answer against the actual car.

We read the gov.uk list in full on 11 November 2026. Band 1 has 21 models, Band 2 has 48, and no MG and no IM model appears in either. Worth knowing because at least two widely used vehicle data sites quote MG prices as including a £2,500 plug-in car grant. There is no £2,500 band in the current scheme, the two bands are £3,750 and £1,500, and MG is not in either. If an MG price you have seen elsewhere looks low, that may be why.

Two Renault pages say up to 306 miles on the WLTP cycle for the techno. Renault's specification table says 385 for the techno in a row labelled EV combined cycle driving range. That is a 26 per cent gap on one car with one battery and one motor. The spec table is odd in a second way too: it gives the dearer esprit Alpine a lower figure than the techno, while the marketing pages present 306 as the range topping figure. We have quoted both and attributed both, because averaging them would invent a number Renault has never published. If range is the deciding factor for you, this is the car to get a straight answer on before you order, and we will chase it.

The ID.3 Neo page gives the range band as 258 to 390 miles. The frequently asked questions further down the same page say the car can travel up to 391 miles on a single charge, and the configurator independently shows 391. It is a one mile difference and it does not change anything for you, but it is worth knowing that Volkswagen's own figures move about, because it tells you how much weight to put on a single published number.

87, 89, 71 and 88 come from the December 2020 test and Euro NCAP's own page says that rating has expired. The live rating was published in November 2025 and reads 86, 87, 78 and 76. Note what happened to safety assist: it dropped twelve points, from 88 to 76, because the test gets harder over time rather than because the car got worse. If you are comparing safety scores across cars tested in different years, that drift is the thing to keep in mind.

The current rating's covered variants are Pure, Pro, Pro S and GTX. The ID.3 Neo's trims are Life and Style, and neither appears. The timing explains it: the assessment was published in November 2025, the Neo was revealed in April 2026 and UK order books opened in August 2026. We checked and there are only two ID.3 assessments in existence, the expired 2020 one and the 2025 one. So the supportable statement is that the ID.3 holds a current five star rating earned on the pre-Neo trims, and that Euro NCAP has not published a result naming the car you can order today. That is less tidy than a five star badge and it is what the documents actually say.

Euro NCAP tested the Megane E-Tech EV60 220ch Techno in March 2022. The EV60 was the 60kWh car. Today's Megane is 67kWh and uses lithium iron phosphate, which is a different capacity and a different battery chemistry. On top of that, the covered variants table on the Euro NCAP page is empty, with only the tested variant marked, so Euro NCAP's own document does not extend that rating to anything else. The rating is real and it is current, and the accurate way to put it is five stars in 2022, tested as the EV60 220ch Techno.

MG4's five stars carry forward from 2022 through a facelift review dated 2 September 2026, which is a genuine revalidation rather than a lapsed rating. The thing to know is that the covered variants are two wheel drive only. The XPOWER is all wheel drive, so it sits outside the rating. If you are looking at the XPOWER specifically, there is no Euro NCAP result that applies to it.

Almost every rapid charging figure you will see is 10 to 80 per cent. Renault's is 15 to 80, which covers 65 percentage points rather than 70. That makes its 24 minutes look better than it is against a rival's 10 to 80 figure, and there is no way to convert between the two without knowing the charging curve, which Renault does not publish. So we have left it labelled rather than quietly lining it up in a column with numbers it does not match.

11kW AC charging requires three phase power. Nearly every UK home is single phase and caps a wallbox at about 7.4kW. Renault states the 11kW charger without that qualification anywhere we could find, and publishes no AC charging time at all, so there is no figure on its pages that tells you how long the car takes on a normal home supply. If you are charging at home rather than at work, ask us and we will get it confirmed against the specification the funder holds.

Renault labels its two numbers minimum boot volume and maximum boot volume. It does not say seats up and seats folded, and minimum and maximum are not the same measurement. 440 against 388 looks like a 52 litre win for the Megane and some of that gap may be the label rather than the car. We have given you each figure with the words the manufacturer actually used, which is the only honest way to present it. If boot space is the deciding factor, measure the thing you need to carry and we will check it against the real load area.

All three publish eight year or ninety six month battery cover. Only Volkswagen publishes the threshold that triggers it, which is capacity falling below 70 per cent during the warranty period. Renault and MG publish the term without the percentage. That does not mean their cover is worse, it means you cannot tell from their own documents what level of degradation would actually be a claim, and on a car you are handing back at the end of a lease that is less important than it would be if you were buying.

The Megane wins on cost once the grant is properly counted, and it is the weakest of the three on published information in two specific ways. Its range is either 306 or 385 miles depending which Renault page you read, which is not a small uncertainty on the one figure that decides whether an electric car suits you. And its 11kW home charging needs a three phase supply your house almost certainly does not have, with no single phase time published anywhere to replace it. So the cheapest car here is also the one you can be least sure about on range and home charging. That is a real trade off rather than a technicality, and if either of those matters to you it is worth getting both confirmed in writing before you commit.