In association with Pod Point
Electric Car Awards 2024: Best hybrid family car
With fully electric and plug-in hybrid cars now coming in all shapes and sizes, we’ve named the best new and used buys in every class. Here we look at the best hybrid family cars...
Volkswagen Golf 1.5 TSI eHybrid Style
The Volkswagen Golf is now 50 years old, but instead of succumbing to middle-age spread, it has become leaner and meaner than most other family hatchbacks. A particularly good example of this is the 1.5 TSI eHybrid variant, which is very efficient and cheap to run.
Like all Golf models, it’s a practical proposition with plenty of space for four tall adults and lots of useful storage solutions dotted around the interior. The drive battery sits under the boot floor, meaning this isn’t height adjustable and some luggage space has been lost, but it’s still comparable with what you get in its biggest rival, the latest Toyota Prius plug-in hybrid.
The Golf eHybrid also rides lumps and bumps well, has tidy handling and is pretty quick off the mark, with a 0-62mph time of 7.2sec.
Crucially, it combines all this with an exceptionally long official electric range of 88 miles. And while you might not be able to go quite that far in the real world, we did achieve an outstanding 73 miles on battery power alone – almost double the distance travelled by the plug-in Prius in our hands.
As well as being more than enough for most daily commutes, this generous range makes the Golf temptingly affordable as a company car; its low, 5% benefit-in-kind tax rate is bettered only by fully electric cars.
The Prius does give the Golf a run for its money in some respects, outclassing it for comfort and refinement, but it simply can’t compete with the practicality and efficiency of Volkswagen’s car.
The eHybrid also benefits from the latest enhancements made to the Golf line-up for 2024, including an improved infotainment system that is far more intuitive than that of the previous model. The menus are more logically arranged now, and there’s the ability to add custom shortcuts across the top of the touchscreen.
Best used hybrid family car
Volkswagen Golf 1.4 TSI GTE (2016-2020)
Price from £10,000
In GTE form, the previous-generation Golf has a smart, well-equipped interior and a 31-mile electric range.
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