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For many buyers, one number defines an EV: range.

Which is understandable. Early electric cars didn’t go far between charges, and public chargers were few and far between. Take the 2010 Nissan Leaf - the first mass-market EV - which managed just 100 miles and took eight hours to charge at home.

Times have thankfully changed. Even the cheapest electric cars of today can double the Leaf’s range and recharge in a fraction of the time.

Thanks to major advances in battery and motor tech, some modern EVs can now go as far on a charge as petrol cars do on a full tank.

Below is a list of the 10 longest-range electric cars on sale in the UK, based on official WLTP figures. Real-world results will vary and you are unlikely to achieve these figures unless you drive gently, in warm weather, or know a thing or two about hypermiling.

The longest range electric car on sale in the UK is the Mercedes-Benz EQS with an impressive 481-mile range. Curious about the rest? Let’s get into it.

Toyota has revealed a stretched, off-road-focused variant of its bZ4X electric SUV that brings more space and more power.

The bZ4X Touring will arrive in the UK next spring and, as the name suggests, it is an off-Tarmac estate version of the three-year-old EV that adds 140mm in length, 20mm in height and a host of rugged design elements.

Clearly a twin of the new Subaru Trailseeker - both use the same e-TNGA platform – the Touring gets more boot space than its standard SUV equivalent, with an increase of 148 litres to 600 litres. This takes it above the likes of the similarly sized Volkswagen ID 5 and BYD Sealion 7 to make it one of the most cavernous on the electric car market.

What’s more, thanks to Subaru’s push for the Trailseeker to feature two identical motors on either axle for better off-road balance (going against Toyota’s previous philosophy of a bigger rear motor), the new Touring puts out 376bhp, up from the SUV’s 338bhp. This cements it as the most powerful electric Toyota available. A 221bhp single-motor set-up is also offered.

Power is drawn from a new 74.4kWh (usable) battery, up from the recently updated car’s 73.1kWh pack. A range figure has yet to be disclosed, but the standard SUV offers up to 318 miles in its most efficient form.

Visually, the Touring is more of a rugged proposition than the standard SUV. While it adopts the new front-end look of the recently updated bZ4X SUV, the Touring also features the Trailseeker’s thicker rear light bar and chunkier rear bumper. In addition, it gains roof rails, blackened wheel arches and an exclusive Brilliant Bronze paint scheme.

Inside, the Touring adopts the same interior as the latest bZ4X, which features a new centre console and 14.0in infotainment screen. For the Touring, a City Moss colour has been added.

Pricing and full UK specifications for the new range-topping variant will be revealed later this year, Toyota says. For reference, the current bZ4X range tops out at £54,000.

In-car audio is as much about relaying information to the occupants as it is listening to music.

With that in mind, one of the latest ideas to emerge from Continental is an instrument display that doubles as a sound chamber to transmit sound without the need for separate speakers.

The display is based on the company’s Ac2ated Sound Technology, which it began developing a number of years ago with audio specialist Sennheiser.

An exercise in system integration, the display does away with the need for separate speakers, saving cost, weight and space.

Sound is generated by actuators, which effectively turn the entire display surface into a speaker thanks to audible vibrations induced in the glass. It can transmit all kinds of sound, including speech, in “exceptional quality”.

According to Continental, a further advantage is ‘acoustic localisation’. As humans, we can tell where a sound is coming from and tend to turn our heads in that direction.

So when a spoken message or alert sound is produced by the display, the driver’s gaze is drawn to the instrument it’s related to, directing attention where it’s needed.

The thinking behind the combined audio and display technology comes from part of the team specialising in vehicle acoustics and also ‘psychoacoustics’, the science of how humans perceive sound.

Although the main use of the display may be to relay information and link visuals and sound more closely, Continental says the actuator technology can be integrated into almost any existing flat component in a car’s interior.

By installing the actuators in door trims, headrests, A-pillars, the rooflining and so on, there is the potential to get rid of all conventional speakers.

That could provide aesthetic benefits (no need for speaker grilles) together with a significant saving of around 40kg (about the weight of multiple speakers and fittings in a high-end audio system) and a 90% reduction in the space needed, which Continental estimates at 30-40 litres depending on the number of speakers used.

Some premium audio systems incorporate more than 30 speakers, so the packaging benefits could be substantial too, assuming the active surface technology can match them for the audio quality.

When the original Ac2ated system was shown by Continental at CES in 2020, it was audio system-focused, rather than display-focused, and called the Speakerless Immersive Sound system. Then, it was integrated with Sennheiser’s Ambeo 3D audio technology.

As Continental said at the time, the concept is similar to the way the wooden body of a string instrument like a violin acts as a resonance chamber and the surface vibrates to project the sound.

Different sizes of surfaces, such as an A-pillar compared with a door panel, handle various frequency ranges in the same way as specific types and sizes of speaker.