Top Gear presenters Paddy McGuinness, Freddie Flintoff and Chris Harris have revealed their favourite electric cars of the year at the virtual TopGear.com Electric Awards.

This year’s virtual TopGear.com ceremony for electric cars, which premiered on https://www.youtube.com/topgear at 7pm 5th April (and is available to view now), unveiled the the best electric cars in the world.

 
Freddie’s favourite was the Rivian R1T pick-up truck with its built-in air compressor and detachable blue tooth speaker, Chris fell for The Polestar 1 so much that he now owns one, and Paddy enjoyed driving the Land Rover Defender more than any other car he’s ever driven on TopGear.

 
However, it was the VW electric ID BUZZ that breezed its way to the winning post at this year’s awards. Volkswagen rode the crest of the California surf scene and hippy culture wave back in the Sixties with the original T2 and the scene never died.

 
The Buzz looks like a van and acts like a van but it's actually a car. Only five seats inside, a massive boot, it’s perfectly smooth and admirably silent, it whisks up to speed, no gears, no fuss and it doesn’t feel small. It’s fresh and invigorating and impressed the judges so much that it was awarded the top accolade of TopGear’s Electric Car of the Year.

 
Commenting on his top choice the Land Rover Defender, Paddy said: There’s some prime contenders out there, but my favourite electric car I’ve driven in the past year would have to be the Land Rover Defender I drove in our eco car challenge. So, I got in and I thought, OK, it’s electric... here we go... it will be what it will be. And then I put my foot down. I’ve gotta say, the first five seconds of being in that electric Defender, when I stabbed my foot right to the floor, is the most fun I’ve had in any car ever on TopGear, and I’ve driven some epic cars over the years.”

 

“I'm not going to lie” said Freddie discussing his choice the Rivian R1T, “but it ticks so many of my boxes. It's a pick-up truck. It's big. It's got a load of gadgets. It's also got 800bhp, goes from 0-60mph in three seconds, has a battery range of 300 miles with the small pack, 400 miles with the big one. And it looks the absolute nuts. Some of the features on it I've never seen on a car before. It's got a built-in air compressor that'll do your tyres, plug sockets, it's got a hole through the middle of it to put all your stuff as well as the flat bed. But the one thing that really sold me? It's got a detachable Bluetooth speaker. What more do you want?”

 
Chris Harris added: “The Polestar 1 is for me, one of the most interesting cars I've driven in the last ten years. I always suspected that a hybrid would be the solution for me on the road, but I've never driven a hybrid that was a hybrid. So I drove this thing and it had a range of 70-miles on EV-only, and then another 300 miles on petrol. So I thought "I might have a go at that" so I've ended up buying one. And I might have the only one in the UK because when the lovely man from Polestar handed it over he said "congratulations, you're our first customer!"

 

18 awards were given out on the night, voted for by the TopGear team.

 
Full list of award winners

 
You can watch the TopGear.com Awards here https://www.youtube.com/topgear and pick up the April issue of Top Gear Magazine now.

 

 

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For more information contact Emma.Burch@bbc.com

 

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