Automotive publication MotorTrend named its 2024 car of the year on Thursday. It’s electric, to a degree. The winner is a hybrid.
The decision is a metaphor for how many Americans seem to feel about battery-electric vehicles or BEVs these days. It also shows what BEV sellers must do to change impressions.
The 2024 Toyota (ticker: TM) Prius is the winner of MotorTrend’s golden calipers. “Toyota has fundamentally redefined the essence of a Prius with its new model,” said MotorTrend Group head of editorial, Ed Loh, in a news release. ‘In an automotive landscape grappling with a scarcity of affordable EV options and inadequate charging infrastructure in the U.S., Toyota made the Prius hybrid the right car for this moment and rightfully earned MotorTrend’s 2024 Car of the Year award in the process.”
Costs, charging infrastructure, and affordability kept MotorTrend from picking other finalists that included the updated Tesla (TSLA) Model 3, which Tesla calls its “highland” update, as well as the Lucid (LCID) Air and Hyundai Motor (005380.Korea) Ioniq 6.
The 2024 Prius is more affordable than all of those, starting at just under $28,000. The Tesla Model 3 starts at about $39,000 before the $7,500 federal tax credit. The Lucid Air starts at about $75,000. The Ioniq 6 starts at about $39,000.