See all Motoring AdviceDue to the unique way an electric vehicle (EV) is set up – with the battery pack forming the floor and the motors usually mounted on the axles – it can mean that they have larger boot areas available to them. And as EVs are increasingly being picked as practical family cars, having a large boot can be a major boon when it comes to versatility.
To that end, we’ve come up with a list of some of the largest-booted EVs on sale right now, but a few notes – number one, we’re ignoring van-derived models, such as the Peugeot e-Rifter (and all the spin-offs), the Opel Vivaro-e Life (and alternatives) and the Ford e-Transit Custom, and similar, because, well, they’re vans underneath it all, so they’re not going to be ideal for everyone’s needs in terms of road footprint. That means the excellent Volkswagen ID. Buzz (1,121 litres of boot space) must be ruled out on a technicality too, though it makes for a fine family car, no arguments there.
And secondly, while we’ve quoted boot space figures in our rundown, some of them are measured differently from others, so the numbers might not be comparable. A great example of this is Tesla, which cites huge boot volumes when compared to similar-sized vehicles in its class, but Tesla being Tesla, it never clearly states just how it measured that boot space in the first place. We suspect it’s to the roof when most car makers quote a figure to the luggage cover.
Finally, most of the EVs on this list are SUVs of some form or another, but honourable mentions to electric estates, which are becoming more commonplace now – and which are relatively affordable compared to some electric SUVs. So don’t discount the MG 5 (479 litres), the Opel Astra Electric Sports Tourer (516 litres) and the Peugeot E-308 SW (548 litres), all of which have big, practical boots for a more reasonable purchase price.
Anyway, here are some of the EVs with the biggest boots.
Audi Q8 e-tron – 569 litres
Proving the rule that boot space measurements can be, if you’ll forgive the unintentional pun when we’re talking about litres, ‘fluid’, in its previous life this Audi electric SUV laid claim to 660 litres of boot space. However, during its midlife update, it switched from being the pure ‘e-tron’ to the ‘Q8 e-tron’, and apparently it lost 91 litres of capacity in the process. Maybe the different boot badge swallowed some of it up, we don’t know. Anyway, at just shy of 570 litres, the Q8 e-tron has a capacious cargo bay and will take most clobber that family life can throw at it.
BMW i5 Touring – 570 litres
One of the newest cars on the list and, happily, an electric estate rather than an SUV, the i5 Touring is great to drive – it is a BMW, after all – and is super-easy to live with, thanks to this giant boot. Sadly, one of BMW’s long-held Touring features – the separately opening tailgate glass – has been deleted from the i5 Touring, slightly diminishing its potential practicality levels somewhat, but the good news is that all models have the same 570-litre cargo area, so it doesn’t matter if you go for the single-motor eDrive40 or the mighty dual-motor M60 xDrive.
Skoda Enyaq – 585 litres
Skoda is a company renowned for offering vast boots on its models (see the Octavia Combi or the Superb Combi for further details), and it’s good to see the tradition continuing with its electric options like the Enyaq. If you want the full 585 litres, you must have the more upright SUV-shaped Enyaq, rather than the racier Enyaq Coupe (570 litres), but the intriguing thing about this Czech chariot is that it shares pretty much everything with the Volkswagen ID.4… and yet that only has a 543-litre load bay. Told you Skoda was the champion of boot space. As a bonus, the Enyaq is one of the most affordable EVs on this list, so getting into one is going to be financially easier than some of the alternatives put forward here.
Volkswagen ID.7 Tourer – 605 litres
As the standard fastback shape, the new ID.7 luxury electric VW has a decent 532-litre area behind the seating compartment, but the svelte Tourer estate spin-off is the first EV on our list to push past the 600-litre barrier. As an electric wagon, Volkswagen has had to make some concessions to aerodynamics to maximise the ID.7 Tourer’s range, so its shape is more of a sleek ‘shooting brake’-type estate, rather than a big boxy thing designed to take massive wardrobes in the back, but still – 605 litres of carrying capacity is not to be sniffed at in an EV which isn’t an SUV.
Mercedes EQS – 610 litres
Although it’s kind of perceived as an electric analogue to the long-serving S-Class saloon, Mercedes’ grand EQS EV is actually a gigantic fastback, or hatch in plainer speak. This means that it trumps its S-Class relation considerably on boot space, having a 610-litre cargo area to play with. That’s mighty impressive, although something else that’s also mighty about this thing is the price – here in Ireland, you’re looking at about €130,000 just to get into an EQS of any sort.
Mercedes EQS SUV – 645 litres
No, you’re not seeing double: Mercedes sells two EVs with EQS badges, but where one is vaguely saloon-like in shape, the other is this goliath SUV. Again, this is not a cheap way into getting an EV with a whopping boot, and it will also depend on the specification you’ve gone for. The seven-seat EQS SUV, with its rear two seats folded down, has a 565-litre boot, which is decent enough to beat that Audi Q8 e-tron we mentioned earlier (and the BMW iX, with its paltry 500 litres), but if you opt for the five-seater in the first place then the rated boot capacity increases to 645 litres. Massive. Better still, you can slide the second row of seats forward in the EQS SUV and liberate up to 800 litres in the seven-seater (with five seats in use), and a gigantic 880 litres in the five-seater, but that feels like cheating to us, so we’ll stick with the 645-litre figure here. Oh, and in the seven-seater? If you use all the seats? There’s just 195 litres of boot space available, which is less than most superminis these days. Tsk.
Volvo EX90 – 655 litres
Volvo was long the king of the massive estate but nowadays, it has sacrificed outright boot volume for swisher exterior styling, while the Swedish firm has also transferred its practicality skills to its SUV line. For a while, that has meant the XC90 has been the space champ for Volvo, but now the honour rests with the EX90, the new all-electric seven-seater. Even with all chairs in use, the EX90 has a 310-litre boot, which puts it on a par with plenty of cars in the Volkswagen Golf’s class of vehicle, but fold the rearmost row of seats away and capacity rises to 655 litres.
Tesla Model S – 744 litres
Right, so Teslas dominate the higher positions on this list, but we must stress again that we’re not entirely sure how Tesla is measuring the relative boot space. A good case in point is the company’s oldest current product, the Model S, which looks like it might be a saloon but isn’t – instead, it’s a fastback, like the Mercedes EQS we’ve already covered. That’s presumably why Tesla has quoted a monumental 744 litres for the Model S, but while we’re not sure that’s an accurate figure, we will still say that the boot on this American EV is going to meet most people’s needs when it comes to cargo-carrying capabilities. A word of caution, though – the Model S is now a special-order vehicle only over here, and it doesn’t come in right-hand-drive format any longer either.
Kia EV9 – 828 litres
What do you get if you give your electric SUV an enormous body? Why, an equally enormous interior, of course, and Kia’s brilliant new EV9 seven-seat SUV is, arguably, the most capacious EV for boot space on this list. Even with all the seats occupied within, the Kia can lay claim to a 333-litre boot, which – like the Volvo EX90 – is a family-car-sized cargo bay as it is. But with just five seats in use, the EV9’s boot ramps up to 828 litres, which is pretty much big enough that you could have a decent game of football in there.
Tesla Model Y – 854 litres
This is Tesla’s most practical car that you can easily get hold of, the Model Y still coming in right-hand-drive format and being the American firm’s smaller SUV. Like the Model S, we’re not sure if it was measured on the same system as all the other non-Teslas on this list that it would actually have an 854-litre boot, but there certainly is plenty of stowage space onboard the Model Y and for many, the lure of the Tesla brand is simply too much to resist.
Tesla Model X – 1,050 litres
Featuring a colossal claimed figure of 1,050 litres, which is what many cars have if you run them in two-seat mode, the Tesla Model X is the ‘winner’ of this list, although it has the same problems as the Model S (it’s an old product now, and Tesla is focusing on the more profitable and higher-demand Model 3 and Model Y cars, so you have to special-order the Model X as a left-hand-drive vehicle only). Nevertheless, if you want to bore your mates about how you have the only EV with a four-figure boot volume when all its seats are in use, you’ll need the Tesla Model X to be parked outside.