If you're in the process of buying an electric vehicle, you may be looking for guidance to help you make the best decision possible. Certainly, there’s no shortage of test drives and reviews out there. It can sometimes be difficult to make sense of them all.
Auto123, at its 2024 model awards, has already presented you with its favorites in the categories of vehicles eligible and ineligible for government subsidies.
See: Our Auto123 2024 Top Picks: The Electric Vehicles
See: Our Auto123 2024 Top Picks: The Best Luxury Electric Vehicles
Consumer Reports (CR) is a non-profit organization that evaluates just about everything on the market, including vehicles. They buy those vehicles that they carry out tests on, just to ensure there are no affiliations or links with auto manufacturers. Their objectivity is exemplary.
This week CR shared its 2024 rankings of the 14 best buys in the EV sector. As per usual, the organization analyzed a wide range of vehicle characteristics, including build quality, roadholding, equipment and price. In the case of electric models, of course, range, recharging capacity, etc. were also taken into account.
In all, some 50 electric models were analyzed for 2024. Here are the 14 that the group identified as the best buys, across various categories that we've reproduced here. They were given a score out of 100.
The winners
In the category of mass-market cars, Consumer Reports identified two vehicles: the Hyundai Ioniq 6 (83 points out of a possible 100) and the Kia Niro (71), which the organization considers a car.
For cars offered by luxury brands, two other models stood out, the BMW i4 (83) and Porsche Taycan (76).
Then, for two-row SUVs, four models earned high scores: the Kia EV6 (77), Tesla Model Y (72), Nissan Ariya (70) and Ford Mustang Mach-E (70).
One three-row SUV also appears on the Top 14 list: the Kia EV9 (78).
Finally, in a category grouping luxury-brand SUVs, five models caught the eye of Consumer Reports' evaluators: the BMW iX (84), Genesis GV60 (75), Lexus RZ (74), Audi Q4 e-tron (71) and Audi Q8 e-tron (70).
What's certainly impressive is that more than a third of the models recognized as best buys belong to the Hyundai/Kia group - 5 out of 14.
As for the other electric vehicles that don't appear on this list, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're no worthy purchase, but simply that CR preferred other solutions.
Here’s Consumer Reports’ full ranking, in order, of the 14 Best EV Buys in 2024:
- - 2024 BMW iX (84/100)
- - 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 6 (83)
- - 2024 BMW i4 (83)
- - 2024 Kia EV9 (78)
- - 2024 Kia EV6 (77)
- - 2024 Porsche Taycan (76)
- - 2024 Genesis GV60 (75)
- - 2024 Lexus RZ (74)
- - 2024 Tesla Model Y (72)
- - 2024 Audi Q4 e-tron (71)
- - 2024 Kia Niro (71)
- - 2024 Nissan Ariya (70)
- - 2024 Ford Mustang Mach-E (70)
- - 2024 Audi Q8 e-tron (70)
