Welcome back to the podcast. Today, Mercedes-Benz-CLA wins a top award.

Tesla Model 3 Standard arriving in the UK. And EVs bounce back in Germany. Plus, stay tuned.

Later in the show, I'll tell you what Americans say stops them buying an EV in 2026.

On EV News China, our spin-off podcast, all about what's happening in the East, Today we're talking about Neo's big, big new

flagship. It's huge. Xiaomi's upgraded SU7 and BYD planning long range hybrids. Join me later for a

bonus show, all about a brand new car reveal today. It's called the Specksheet, meet the

Kia EV2. Kear EV2 obviously is the smallest vehicle that we've got from them. It's called The Specksheet, meet the Kia EV2. Kier EV2, obviously, is the smallest vehicle that we've got from them. It's really good, though. And it'll be live tonight for patrons. The Patreon exclusives go into the free feed after seven days. So if I were you, just wait a week. It's not really topical. If you can wait, and then you get the show for free. It's the same content. It's just available a week earlier for patrons at any tier. Let's kick off. Mercedes-Benz, CLA is winning the European Car of the Year Award for 2026. announced at the Brussels motor show. The CLA scored 320 points. Now, that might mean nothing to you because it meant

nothing to me, but I'll put it in context now. It was 100 points ahead of the second place car,

which was a Schoda L Rock. That was on 220. And the Kia EV 4 coming on 208 points, Citro and EC5

Air Cross 1 point behind. It is Mercedes-Benz first win in the award since 1974, then the 450 SE took the title. The CLA succeeds last year's winner, which was the Renault 5 and its Alpine A290 sibling. This year's shortlist made a point without meaning to. All seven finalists arrived with electric power trains, and most were actually full beves as well, in a competition that normally rewards clever low-cost transport than big engineering swings.

The voting system leaves little room for tactical games, though. There's 59

motoring journalists on the jury from 23 countries. They begin with 35 eligible cars. The finalists

go down to seven. Each juror gets 25 points to distribute, and a maximum of 10 points per car.

So the Mercedes-Benz-CLA absolutely smashed this one

by a country mile. So this is on an 800-volt EV architecture, silicon carbide inverter, heat pump,

two-speed transmission, so the sweet part of the range is always being used. Mercedes-Benz say a

WLTP range of 484 miles or 779

kilometres from an 85 kilowatt hour pack. DC charging at 320 kilowatts. The car's long been out here.

It's coming out in other markets like the US this year. The company also says the CLA can add 200 miles,

that's 322 kilometres in 10 minutes, and that the mid-range, CLA 250 plus, does 4.97 miles per kilowatt hour. That's a nice even 8 kilometres per kilowatt hour. Congratulations to the team there. That CLA really is a cracking vehicle. Now, good news if you are

after a cheaper Tesla Model 3 to get into that whole ecosystem, Tesla's launched a cheaper

Model 3 standard, it's called. It costs 37, 990 pounds here. That's £2,000 or $2,700

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