Category: Reviews

What is the Best Car To Buy 2025? We’ve narrowed down to our five finalists for this year, and will announce the winner early next year. We also eliminated another 18 new and redesigned cars for a variety of reasons, ranging from being too expensive to not evolving their respective segment enough. The reason for our annual award series is to…

• Three electric subcompact hatchbacks go on a 330-mile road trip.
• The Kia EV3, Skoda Elroq and Mini Aceman SE go head to head.
• One of these EVs stands out for the wrong reasons.

Everyone is waiting for electric cars to become cheaper and have longer driving ranges. But the truth is, they’re already here–you just have to know where to look.

The Kia EV3 is one of those cars. As are the Skoda Elroq and Mini Aceman. They’re all part of the subcompact crossover segment, one of the most crowded markets where names like the Volvo EX30 and Toyota Urban Cruiser also want to make names for themselves.

And while neither of these are currently available in the United States, the Kia EV3 will likely come stateside soon. But how does it compare to some of its main competitors in Europe? Rather well, as the good people from What Car found out.

You can watch their United Kingdom-to-Belgium road trip video embedded below, but I’ll give you a quick summary here.

The Kia EV3 has the longest official range rating when compared to the Skoda Elroq and Mini Aceman–367 miles on the WLTP testing procedure. Meanwhile, the Elroq’s maximum rated range is 360 miles and the Mini Aceman SE’s is 251 miles.

The Aceman is also the smallest of the group in terms of size, while the Elroq is the largest. When it comes to pricing, they all start under $35,000 in the UK, but it’s a different story once you reach for the top trims where the price tags can reach $45,000.

[embedded content]

Both the Kia EV3 and the Skoda Elroq were comfortable on the rather lousy British motorways at the beginning of the trip. All the cars left with a full battery and after about 100 miles into the journey, the Elroq had 190 miles left and the EV3 estimated it had 165 miles left. However, things were noticeably worse in the Mini. The reviewer said that the car wasn’t particularly comfortable on bumpy roads and, to make matters worse, the indicated range left was just 88 miles.

Things went from bad to worse after hitting the French highways, which have a higher speed limit of 80 mph compared to the 70 mph limit in the UK. Here, the Mini needed a top-up along the way, whereas the Kia and the Skoda reached the destination with range to spare.

Comfort-wise, the Kia EV3 is the most comfortable out of the group, followed by the Skoda Elroq and the Mini Aceman, according to What Car. In terms of rear passenger space, the Skoda is the most generous, followed by the Kia and the Mini.

In the end, the efficiency figures were as follows: The Kia EV3 with the big battery pack used 115.8 kWh of energy over 330 miles and averaged 3.1 miles/kWh. It needed two charging stops, both made at Tesla Superchargers, which in Europe have CCS2 plugs. The Skoda Elroq averaged 3.3 miles/kWh, as indicated by the trip computer.

The Mini Aceman SE reported an average efficiency of 3.5 miles/kWh, so the best of the group, but it needed three charging stops and the total charging cost was higher than the other two.

Boreham Motorworks has unveiled a modern Mk1 Ford Escort RS One of the available engines revs to 10,000 rpm and delivers 296 hp Pricing starts at $375,000 The original Ford Escort sold in Europe was a popular economy car whose production spanned decades and also got Ford started in rallying. The Mk1 Escort would eventually become one of the most…

What kind of vehicle is the 2024 Dodge Charger? What does it compare to? After a much ballyhooed final year and the end of the Dodge V-8, the 2024 Dodge Charger returns as an electric vehicle badged as the Charger Daytona. A twin-turbo inline-6 will follow in 2025 as the Charger Sixpack, but for now the muscular electric car absorbs the Challenger…

New regulations will go into effect for Formula 1 race cars in 2026 Next-gen F1 race cars will have less downforce, more electric power, and a Manual Override mode for overtaking F1 cars will become smaller and lighter, run on synthetic fuel, and still go 220 mph with faster cornering Formula 1 is set to enter a new era in 2026 and the FIA, which…

Carlos Tavares, who led Stellantis since its formation in 2021, quit the company this week According to sources, Tavares was too heavily focused on cost-cutting and making the company green This focus reportedly led to the Hemi V-8s and popular models being dropped without their replacements being ready With Stellantis’ global sales down 17% in…

Polestar is deep in the development of its Polestar 5, a Porsche Taycan rival previewed by 2020’s Precept concept. The new car is set to begin sales in 2025, likely as a 2026 model. Initial development work on the sleek electric sedan was handled at Polestar’s R&D center in the U.K., and now the latest prototypes are out testing in public…

Ferrari will never move production out of its home in Maranello, Italy, company CEO Benedetto Vigna said on Tuesday at a conference in New York organized by Reuters. Vigna made the comment in response to a question on whether Ferrari would consider moving production to the U.S. “We will sell cars in the U.S., but we will make cars in Maranello,”…

Xiaomi will follow up its debut SU7 electric sedan with the YU7 electric SUV The Xiaomi YU7 is slated to launch in China around mid-2025 The vehicle bears a resemblance to the V-12-powered Ferrari Purosangue Xiaomi may be best known for its smartphones, but the Chinese technology company is quickly becoming a recognized name in the world of…

The Lotus Evija is being delivered, five years after it was first shown The electric hypercar packs 2,011 hp and a 93-kwh battery Pricing starts at approximately $3 million It’s now been more than five years since the Lotus Evija electric hypercar was first revealed to the world. Originally scheduled for deliveries in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic…