In the run-up to the announcement of the overall winner of the 2024 UK Car of The Year (COTY) Awards , the seven major category winners in contention for that prize have just been released. Interestingly, whilst one in four cars sold in the UK now being a plug-in electric, five of the seven category winners were full electric!
Even more interesting was they were all from different vehicle manufacturers … and that Tesla wasn’t amongst them. (As Tesla released no new EVs to the UK market in 2023).
Another interesting aspect is four of the five EVs are available (or soon to be) in Australia, but only one of the two internal combustion engine cars is. (The Honda Civic Type R).Â
The list of winners in contention for the overall UK COTY are listed below – those in bold being fully electric:
• Small Car – Renault Clio
• Family Car – Hyundai Ioniq 6
• Small Crossover – Volvo EX30 (Australian arrival expected very soon)
• Medium Crossover – Fisker Ocean (Not available in Australia)
• Large Crossover – Kia EV9
• Executive Car – BMW i5
• Performance Car – Honda Civic Type R
To qualify for an award, the car needs to have been launched on or after January 1, 2023, or be on sale by December 31, 2023.
Scoring is done by every judge voting for the car they want to win that section. If there’s a tie, those tied cars go into a second round of voting with each judge choosing their favourite.
If that produces a tie, the chair has a casting vote. From there, to decide the overall UK Car of The Year Award the judges then vote for their preferred overall winner out of the category winners.
The overall winner will be announced this weekend (Australian time) – but whichever car is the final 2024 UK COTY winner – EVs in general are the unmistakable winner in being considered the leading technology in the vast majority of vehicle segments.
Bryce Gaton is an expert on electric vehicles and contributor for The Driven and Renew Economy. He has been working in the EV sector since 2008 and is currently working as EV electrical safety trainer/supervisor for the University of Melbourne. He also provides support for the EV Transition to business, government and the public through his EV Transition consultancy EVchoice.