Stephen Corby’s best electric car of 2023: Rolls-Royce Spectre

It’s time for our editors to have their say about their electric car experiences and expectations!

Look, it’s not really a fair fight, is it, when the Spectre is a Rolls-Royce, costs around $1 million and feels like several million dollars inside, while every other EV I drove this year felt like… a car? Sure, there were some surprisingly fast ones – like the Kia EV6 GT, which accelerates almost as hard as its suspension feels around town – and some stylish ones from Polestar and Mercedes-Benz, but really, honestly none of them finished even a distant second behind the Roller, because the gap was too large, like a song-writing contest between Tim Minchin and a cat, or a running race between me and a rabbit.

Now, obviously, every Rolls-Royce I’ve been lucky enough to pilot has been something of an event on wheels, a paean to perfection, a plush in a lush inside a gush of gooey goodness, and yes the deep, rich carpets alone are enough to make a man sigh at the injustice of not being a billionaire, but the Spectre is not just another Roller, it’s an electric vehicle and, at this stage, the apotheosis of what that represents. 

I didn’t even expect it to be so good, but when you drive the Spectre -which his fitted with a battery the size of a small-ish church, a theoretical range in excess of 400km (not that any owner will need that, if they’re going further than 150km they’ll take a chopper, or a Lear Jet) and the ability to haul its enormous heft to 100km/h in 4.5 seconds – you realise that these are vehicles that were always meant to be electric. Indeed, their existence feels like the completion of an inevitability – Charles Rolls predicted back in 1900 that they’d be the way to go, at least for luxury vehicles that need to offer clean, noiseless and utterly effortless motoring.

So the idea of it appealed, and the reality, and on top of that it looks pretty damn wonderful, inside and out. What really made it the standout experience of the year, though, was driving it, which we did in the lovely Nappa Valley in California. And it really was an absolute hoot to pilot. I may never get to do it again, but even having done it once is something I will remember well beyond 2023.

Biggest EV surprise of 2023: MG4

It seems mad to include this, because I only drove it around a few blocks, but it was such a standout that it must go in. This is at least partly because I was forced to take it for a short drive by a colleague who rarely gets so excited about any car, and over my protestations that I’d had enough of crappy Chinese cars and couldn’t take any more.

The colleague in question was convinced that I would be blown away by how good the MG4 it was and what a leap ahead it represented, not just for MG, but all Chinese cars and the idea of affordable EVs in general.

And, after I’d refused to even get in it for a good hour, derided him as insane and demanded he take a drug test and have a good lie down, I did take it for a quick spin and was annoyingly, absurdly impressed. 

So much so that I then tried to book a test in one myself, only to be told by MG that they’d noticed I seemed to deeply dislike Chinese cars, and their cars, and that they weren’t sure this was wise. But I have persisted and it’s coming soon, so I could also suggest that it’s the car I’m most looking forward to driving, properly, in 2024. But that would be just too mad.

The electric car I’m most looking forward to in 2024: Volkswagen ID.Buzz

Have I ever been excited about a new van before? No. Is it possible that, surveying a list of the 34 new EVs that will arrive on our shores this year that not much raises my temperature, aside from an electric version of the Maybach, which seems a little too obvious? Well, yes.

But really, it’s just the look and feel of the Volkswagen ID.Buzz van that does it for me, the distant connection to the idea of  the Volkswagen Kombi, a vehicle I’ve never owned nor driven, but one that just oozes romance and holiday appeal. This new VW might turn out to be a total Buzz Kill, but I’m still excited about its arrival, which should happen late in the year.

The ID.Buzz van will come in two configurations, one with three-row seating and one designed to haul cargo, and they can keep the second one, thanks very much. That really is a van.