At crunch-time for the DRIVEN Car Guide 2025 New Zealand Car of the Year, we were down from nine Category Winners to an overall top three: Kia EV3 (Best City SUV), Tesla Model 3 (Best Passenger Car) and BYD Shark 6 (Best Lifestyle/Adventure Vehicle).
At that point, we hit the road in our trio-at-the-top, for a lot of driving and a lot of COTY conversation. Trust us, you wouldn’t want to hear it all, but join in here for a little slice-of-life as we work our way towards a winner (and yes, we know you know what that is already).
Kia EV3
Damien O’Carroll: I think it looks great. I think it's nicely put together. I also think it's quite slow, remembering that the same motor powers every model, including the $70k-plus GT-Line. There’s an AWD one coming… I’d expect that to be frighteningly expensive though.
David Linklater: It will. It'll also be really good though, because the EV3 does feel like a proper, grown-up car. It doesn't feel like a novelty city EV.
I agree about the styling. I think I'm not a huge fan of Kia's current corporate look. But out of all the cars, I think that the EV3 is absolutely number one, closely followed by the EV9. That looks good too.
Matthew Hansen: What I like is that the EV3 feels like Kia's vision kind-of distilled into one thing. It feels a lot more well-rounded and together than an EV5, for example. And I don’t mind the EV5 at all.
DO: Hopping back into it, particularly after other EVs that I've driven recently with similar pricing and similar size, it does feel a little underwhelming.
MH: I think the EV3 is pretty realised. But yes, think about early in the year when this came out and we were all very impressed by it; the industry moves so quickly.
There's already this huge amount of competition coming from China that's going to be very similarly priced or cheaper. That's kind of where the EV3 takes a little step back as an overall package.
DO: Rather awkwardly, a lot of them have come after the cutoff for this COTY.
DL: Sounds like a job for 2026.
MH: Yeah, but also a job for Kia as well, hopefully to take that on board and maybe we’ll see a cheaper EV3 or that more powerful one.
DL: I’ll show my age now. One thing I do think Kia has absolutely right is the mix of digital with physical controls; even the controls that aren't 100% physical, like the shortcuts on the dashboard. A lot of the most-used functions are all accessible with one touch.
MH: That's years of care by Kia, doing a really good job on that stuff.
DL: The last thing I would add is that although it's a city car, I'd happily drive the EV3 to Wellington right now. It's got long legs and very long range.
Tesla Model 3
MH: Hey, what do you think about Elon Musk?
DL: Ha ha. Yeah, it's quite hard not to politicise discussion about any Tesla, because every time you meet somebody in the car, that’s where the conversation goes. The challenge for us is to keep it about the product.
MH: Tesla, like it or not: there's lots of really interesting things to talk about purely on that product side, like the battery technology and the way the cars behave. For example, so many other brands have got mountains of evidence from customers about how having everything on a touchscreen is not ideal; but Tesla does it anyway and the customers accept it.
Of course, the big thing from Tesla is the FSD [Full Self Driving] Supervised-in-brackets option.
DL: That's one of the things that convinced me about having it as one of our top three. Not the fact that you can now have FSD, although that's definitely a watershed moment; I'm amazed how good it is and how natural it feels. But it also made me really think about the car again: take FSD away and is it still good? It really is.
It's got all the electric tech; EV people love ’em. But it's actually good fun to drive for real people and it’s an impressive family sedan with a fair bit of character.
DO: I would go so far as to say that the current Model Y and Model 3, or Highlands and Juniper as the dorks call them, are the first proper cars Tesla has built. They're not just leaning on the fact that they're a tech novelty or a digital device.
MH: Not that I want to make this an all-FSD thing, but have you guys had “moments” with FSD?
DL: No, not really. A couple of questionable lane choices, and there’s one Stop sign on my way home that it insists on ignoring.
MH: I've had a few. I had one go through a red light when I was in Australia driving it for the first time. But I also feel like it's an empty thing to complain about the quality of FSD, because what on earth else is anywhere near it?
DL: And the concept is it's supervised, so you're supposed to still be in control. To my mind, it can do 95% of what I need a car to do every day. It’s driven me to work many times and I haven’t given it a thought.
DO: It’s had a few little brain-fade moments with me. It had trouble initially with an intersection at the end of the street going down to the Chelsea Sugar Factory [Birkenhead, Auckland’s North Shore]. It got confused.
DL: That's a complicated intersection.
DO: Yes, and human drivers get confused there, too. The first time when it screwed up, I had to intervene; second time it was a bit more reserved and hesitant, but got it right. After that, it knew exactly what to do. It's learning, which is incredible.
Is it worth $11,400 though? I don't know.
DL: I think it is.
MH: Is it worth a nominal subscription fee to show to show your mum and dad or whatever: $159 per month?
DL: Well, how many how many ute owners spend $11k on accessories? This is more useful than a lot of those.
DO: Okay, if I was working in an office in the city and had to commute every day, I wouldn't think twice about spending that.
DL: The car is good value. Volatile pricing and residuals are Tesla curses and it's not fair on consumers, but at the moment, as it stands, it's an incredible buy. Throw $11k on top for FSD and you've still got a well-priced car.
BYD Shark 6
DL: The Shark came along very late-2024, so it just missed our 2024 Car of the Year. It was really quite revolutionary when it arrived, but it's had to face a whole bunch of new electrified utes this year. Yet here it is in the top three. That really says something.
DO: The only thing that’s really come into the conversation around Shark 6 showing any weakness is its off-road ability and towing.
But that's also partly a perception that NZers have: it needs to be able to go everywhere and tow everything… even if most of us don’t.
MH: When you look at utility for people that use these things on a work site or in the weekends or whatever, there are very few vehicles that have this kind of V2L [vehicle-to-load] functionality. The Ranger PHEV does, but that’s much less of an EV and even the cheapest one is $13k more expensive than this Shark 6 Premium.
DL: On value for money, the Shark's in another league from most rivals. I would happily trade off some towing, payload and ultimate off-road ability for how good it is on the road. It's still good off-tarmac, just not just the ultimate 4x4.
MH: It's the only ute this year that's come along and offered lots of new things that consumers have gravitated to.
DO: Partly because it looks good.
DL: That's important. It's got to look right.
MH: It's freaking fast.
DL: It really is. It's 321kW! But we don't tend to focus on that. The rest of it is so good, the speed is just a bonus. Being silly-fast is not its only trick.
DO: That’s not what you're what you're buying it for. In terms of driving it today, apart from a slight sort of truckiness around the rear end, it might as well be an SUV. It's just such a nice thing to drive.
