We’ve gathered the 12 finest electric cars currently on sale for less than £40,000 – and our crack team of testers – to choose Britain’s best affordable EV in 2024
PHOTOGRAPHY MAX EDLESTON AND JACK HARRISON
As zero-emission vehicle mandate pressures build and sales growth stutters, getting buyers into affordable electric cars might be considered the European car industry’s central mission for the next couple of years. That’s good news for the consumer, because the inevitable competition should cut prices, accelerate technical development and, in the longer term, bring to market a generation of zero-emission vehicles that are better than their predecessors. So goes the thinking.
But what about now? What is the best way to spend sensible money on a new, affordable electric car in 2024? And is it any different from how it was a year ago, or two – or longer still? Well, with between £35,000 and £40,000 to spend, or a notional PCP finance budget of about £100 a week after a typical deposit, the difference today is choice.
We could have assembled a field of 20 EVs to match that budget, but had we tried to do the same in 2022, we would have struggled to make it past half that. So the competition for your deposit has already started.
The 12-strong field of EVs we have convened here includes cars from established European premium brands, lesser-known Chinese firms and just about everything in between. It contains digital tech-laden star quality, added practicality, big-hitting performance and more.
Over the next 14 pages, EVs from BYD, Cupra, Hyundai, Jeep, Kia, MG, Renault, Smart, Tesla, Vauxhall, Volkswagen and Volvo will face off. Stand by as Autocar staffers Steve Cropley, Sam Phillips, Matt Prior, Will Rimell, Matt Saunders and Illya Verpraet rate them, rank them and lay bare all of their strengths and weaknesses to name Britain’s best sub-£40,000 electric car.
12th SMART #1
Nosing around under the bonnet and beneath the plastic inserts of an EV isn’t always a particularly edifying experience. There’s usually less to see than in an ICE car. But with the Smart #1 and Volvo EX30 together, you can peer inside to see the shared underbody elements, box-section steel crash and chassis structures that underpin these two Geely group cars.
But while they’re the same underneath, they have been given very different characters on the surface. Nowhere is that more eviden
