All-electric VW ID.3 wins best “hatch” in UK car awards

Volkswagen’s popular ID.3 electric small hatch – which is not available in Australia, nor likely to be anytime soon – has been awarded the ‘Best Small Hatch’ award at the UK Car of the Year Awards 2021, the model’s tenth award in the UK in the last 30 months.

Two electric vehicles were awarded titles in the UK Car of the Year Awards, with the Honda E receiving the award for ‘Best City Car’ and Volkswagen’s ID.3 receiving the title for ‘Best Small Hatch’.

The judging panel for the UK Car of the Year Awards, which comprised 29 motoring journalists from across the UK, highlighted the ID.3’s design, space, and practicality, and praised how it makes electric vehicles more accessible to the public.

“A brilliant family hatch in its own right, with a smart interior and plenty of space for a family,” said Alex Robbins, a freelance car journalist and one of the Awards’ judging panel. “Yet it’s also an accessible, easy to use electric car that will surely bring electric motoring to the masses.”

Fellow motoring journalist and panellist Guy Bird, said, “It’s always nice – but all too rare – when a concept car makes production with original design intent intact. The ID.3 is such a vehicle, with high-roofed hatchback silhouette present and correct – proportionally offset by large wheels – and with product design-influences galore.”

This is the tenth award the ID.3 has won in the UK since it first won the ‘Most Wanted’ award in the Octobet 2019 carwow awards. Since then, it has gone on to win awards from Top Gear, What Car?, GQ Car Awards, and more.

Volkswagen’s ID.3 has also won numerous other international Car of the Year awards, including the German Car of the Year Awards title for Best Car in the ‘Premium’ category for cars below €50,000, which was awarded in October 2020.

The ID.3’s win in the UK is not surprising, given not only it’s past award successes but also news in October which dropped pricing for the car to just under £30,000 ($AU55,000).

The timing of the new pricing came only four weeks after the first British customers began driving away their limited-production ID.3 1^st Editions. At the same time, orders for the seven new pre-configured series ID.3 models and their new pricing opened in the UK, with deliveries expected by month’s end.

According to numbers published in early November, the ID.3 was five times more popular in Norway than the next best-selling EV, MG’s ZS EV, with 2,475 ID.3 hatches in Norway in October, compared to the MG ZS EV’s 586 units.

A month later, the ID.3 again topped Norway’s sales list – the world’s most advanced EV market – with just under a thousand models sold.

Volkswagen are also continuing to look at evolutions of the EV.3, as just this week it was reported that the company was exploring the possibility of releasing a convert