2022 Highlights

Motoring correspondent Philip Nolan gets to test drive many new cars. These are some of his favourites from 2022

THE SUPER(POLE)STAR

In the past year, I’ve test-driven 22 full EVs, the most ever in a single year, which tells you exactly what way the market is going. They ranged from the Fiat 500e, the cheapest EV on the Irish market at just under 25 grand, all the way to the eye-wateringly expensive but brilliant Mercedes-Benz EQS and the Audi RS e-tron GT. The latter did double duty as the official wedding car when I chauffeured one of my nieces to her wedding.

My favourite was the Polestar 2 (pictured above) from

Volvo’s offshoot EV brand. I loved the understated looks, the premium cabin, the 408hp on tap, the 0-100kph of just 4.7 seconds, and the twin-motor all-wheel drive, all for the (relatively speaking) reasonable price of €74,295. The Polestar 3 crossover SUV is due in 2023, though with a price tag of €100,000 that will be the real test of whether the fledgling brand really can find a sweet spot among the German big boys. My instinct says yes.

X-CEPTIONAL

Not everyone is ready to go fully electric, so Nissan has delivered the perfect halfway house with the Qashqai e-POWER and, from early 2023, the X-Trail e-POWER too. Both come with petrol engines, but they never actually turn the wheels. Instead, they power a generator that in turns keeps the electric battery topped up.

In the entry-level model, available as a five-seater from €45,995, a single motor drives the front wheels. In the e-4ORCE model I tested (seven-seat SVE trim, €61,995) on winding Alpine roads in Slovenia, there are motors on each axle, allowing for all-wheel drive. In this car you’re never going to be searching for an available charger, because you never have to plug the X-Trail in at all. Literally all the necessary power comes from the constantly topped-up compact 2kWh battery. A spin on a test track showed the X-Trail has proper off-road chops too.