The World Car Awards have been decided; the winners in six categories were announced at the New York Auto Show. The big winner is the Kia EV – it took home the title of World Car of the Year and Electric Car of the Year. In the end, there was only one category where a thoroughly European car came out on top.
The jury, consisting of 100 motor journalists from 29 countries worldwide, including “Krone” motor editor Stephan Schätzl, decided: Five of the six titles go to Asian manufacturers, if you include Volvo as a Geely subsidiary. Only BMW wins a category. The dominance of electric drives is also striking, although BMW is an outlier here too, as the 5 Series is not only available with an electric drive, but also as a combustion engine. And the Toyota Prius won in the only category in which the drive does not play a role: World Car Design. But in detail – here are the winners at a glance: It is not the first success for Kia: in 2023 the Kia EV6 took the title as World Performance Car, in 2020 the Kia Telluride became World Car of the Year and the Kia Soul EV won the Urban rating in the same year. 32 candidates were able to take part in the election for World Car of the Year this year. The requirements include availability in two of the most important markets (China, Europe, India, Japan, Korea, Latin America, USA) and on two continents.
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