MG U9 EV: Australia Is the First Market in the World, and It Would Be the Only Electric Ute Here Rated to Tow 3,500kg

Image credit: MG Motor Australia. Overseas model shown, local specification may vary.

MG has confirmed the electric version of its U9 dual-cab, and it has done something genuinely unusual with it: Australia gets it before anybody else on earth. That is the part worth paying attention to, and it is the part that keeps getting garbled in the retelling.

Because the phrase doing the rounds is "Australia's first electric ute", and that is not what happened. Australia is the first market for this particular ute. Our own database has been carrying an electric ute since well before this announcement, and it is worth a minute of your time before we get to the good numbers.

We Have Had an Electric Ute for Three Years. Almost Nobody Bought One

The LDV eT60 landed here in 2023 and it is still listed, still on sale, and still sitting in our database at $99,990 before on-road costs. A KGM Musso EV followed in 2025. So the U9 EV would be roughly our third or fourth electric ute, not our first.

The reason nobody talks about the eT60 is the reason the U9 EV matters. Here is the comparison, and it is brutal.

eT60 figures are current Australian specs from the CarSorted database. U9 EV figures are as reported at the announcement and have not been published by MG Australia.

One thousand kilograms of braked towing is the number that killed the eT60 as a serious tool. It is a third of what a diesel U9, a HiLux or a Ranger will pull. If the U9 EV really is rated to 3,500kg, it becomes the first electric ute in this country that a caravan owner or a boat owner can look at without immediately walking away. That, and not the word "first", is the actual story.

If you want to sanity-check what any of this means for your own rig, our TowingSorted planner and the towing and payload calculator will do the GVM and ball-weight arithmetic properly.

Image credit: MG Motor Australia. Overseas model shown, local specification may vary.

The Payload Is Where the Bill Comes Due

A 102.2kWh battery weighs what it weighs, and a ute only has so much gross vehicle mass to spend. The reported 685kg payload is the compromise, and you can see the size of it against the diesel U9s we already hold.

Diesel U9 figures from the CarSorted database, sourced from MG Australia. U9 EV figures as reported, not published by MG Australia.

So the electric one gives up somewhere between 85kg and 185kg of payload depending on which diesel you compare it against, and it lands under the one-tonne mark that a lot of fleet buyers and a lot of tradies treat as pass or fail. For what it is worth, 685kg is exactly what our row for the GWM Cannon Alpha Ultra PHEV carries too, so this is a battery-weight problem rather than an MG problem.

The other half of that equation is what happens to 430km when you hitch 3,500kg to the back. WLTP numbers are measured with an empty tray and nothing on the tow ball. Nobody has published a towing range figure, we are not going to invent one, and it is the single most important number this ute has yet to produce.

What MG Australia Has Actually Published: Almost Nothing

Here is the bit we think is worth being straight about. We went to MG's Australian site to confirm the specs, and the U9 EV page is a model name, a "Coming soon" badge, a register-your-interest form and a line reading "Overseas model shown. Local specification may vary." There is not a single number on it. No battery, no range, no towing figure, no price, no date.

Everything in the tables above marked "reported" comes from the announcement briefing and from the federal approval paperwork the car has already been through. We think those figures are probably right. But probably right is not the same as published, so we have labelled them that way rather than dressing them up, and none of them have gone into our database against a U9 EV row yet. When MG Australia puts its own numbers up, they will.

Image credit: MG Motor Australia. Overseas model shown, local specification may vary.

On Safety, One Thing to Be Careful About

You will see a five-star ANCAP rating attached to this car. Be careful with it. ANCAP's published U9 record is five stars from 2024 testing, and the record itself says, in its own words, that it applies to U9 diesel variants. There is no ANCAP rating published for the electric U9.

A different powertrain means different weight, different weight distribution and a different structure around the battery, and ANCAP does not hand a rating across on the basis of a shared badge. Our policy is that a rating that has not been published does not exist, so the U9 EV shows no data on safety until ANCAP says otherwise.

Our Take: the Towing Number Is the Whole Ballgame

MG spent the diesel U9's launch telling anyone who asked that a fully electric ute was not a priority, on the grounds that payload, towing and range all suffer. Eighteen months later here it is, and Australia is first in the queue. That reversal tells you something about how fast this segment is moving, and it tells you MG thinks the towing problem is now solved well enough to sell.

The honest position: if 3,500kg holds up in production trim, this is the first electric ute in Australia that competes with a diesel on the spec that matters most to ute buyers, and that is a real milestone regardless of who got here first. If the price lands north of $70,000 it will run straight into the BYD Shark 6 at $57,900 and the Cannon Alpha PHEV at $66,990, both of which tow, both of which carry more, and neither of which asks you to find a charger before you can drive home from the coast.

We will have the full spec in the database the day MG Australia publishes it, price included. Until then, the electric U9 is a very promising set of numbers that its own maker has not yet stood behind. Our electric ute guide and the wider MG range are where to look in the meantime.