MG switches to a next-gen front-drive platform for its latest value EV It might have been wild, unfenced territory to begin with, but manufacturers of electric cars are slowly converging on certain important conventions. Having experimented here and there, they are now tacitly agreeing what the best routes are towards efficiency, drivability, driver appeal and more in a modern electric passenger car.Fundamental drive layout is one area where difference still exists, however. Some brands started with front-motor, front-wheel-drive cars and later moved to rear-drive, finding efficiency gains on the way. Others have progressed in the opposite way and somehow found matching gains in the process.And some car makers see a case for both front-motor, front-drive and rear-motor, rear-drive EVs. MG owner SAIC is one of them. While most of MG’s electric cars to date have had rear-axle drive, SAIC’s latest new platform – called E3 – switches the layout around.The first car off that platform, the MG 4 EV Urban, is not a replacement for the popular MG 4 electric hatch, but a kind of sidekick for it. Yielding the packaging benefits of both semi-solid-state battery technology and a front-drive layout, it dovetails with the regular MG 4 range, reaching downwards into value-car territory – and giving customers who thought they could only afford an electrified supermini something much more practical to consider.