Carwow

Carwow: one of the world’s biggest car-review channels, with mainstream EV coverage

Carwow is a UK-based automotive marketplace and YouTube channel fronted by Mat Watson. It is not an EV-only channel; it covers the full car market, including electric cars, hybrids, plug-in hybrids, petrol and diesel vehicles, supercars, SUVs, family cars, drag races, off-road tests, buying advice, and entertainment-led comparisons. For EV viewers, Carwow is useful because electric cars are shown to a very large mainstream audience rather than only to EV enthusiasts.

Carwow is one of the biggest car channels on YouTube. Current YouTube listings show the main Carwow channel with about 10.9 million subscribers and around 3,400 videos, while Carwow itself announced in 2025 that the channel had passed 10 million subscribers and had become one of the largest car YouTube channels in the world.

The channel is best suited to mainstream car buyers and casual car viewers who want polished, entertaining, and easy-to-understand reviews. Carwow’s style is more accessible and faster-paced than many specialist EV channels. It is especially useful for viewers who are EV-curious but still compare electric cars with petrol, diesel, hybrid, or plug-in hybrid alternatives. The channel usually asks the broad consumer question: is this car good, is it worth the money, and how does it compare with its rivals?

Mat Watson is the central personality of the channel and has presented on Carwow since 2016. He is also Carwow’s Chief Content Officer, leading editorial content across the company’s websites in the UK, Spain, and Germany. His presentation style is direct, humorous, highly polished, and very YouTube-native, which has helped make Carwow’s reviews and drag races widely accessible beyond traditional car-enthusiast audiences.

A major strength of Carwow is production quality and format clarity. The reviews are tightly structured, visually polished, and easy to follow, with clear sections on exterior design, interior quality, infotainment, practicality, driving, performance, and verdict. Mat’s familiar format, including practical tests and memorable review segments, makes it easy for viewers to compare one car with another. Carwow’s own “how we test cars” page notes that the channel combines entertaining drag races and off-roading with in-depth reviews of a wide variety of cars.

For EV coverage, Carwow is pragmatic and mainstream rather than specialist. Electric cars are treated as normal modern vehicles and regularly appear in reviews, comparisons, range-related content, and drag races. However, EVs are not reviewed from a pure EV-enthusiast perspective. A car still needs to succeed on price, practicality, design, comfort, infotainment, performance, charging, range, and overall value. That makes Carwow helpful for buyers who are interested in EVs but not necessarily committed to them.

The channel’s geek level is accessible to moderate. Carwow covers EV basics such as battery size, claimed range, charging speed, performance, efficiency, boot space, interior technology, and price, but it is not primarily a technical EV testing channel. Viewers looking for detailed charging-curve analysis, winter range data, battery chemistry, thermal-management strategy, diagnostics, or repeatable 1,000 km tests will usually need more specialist EV channels. Carwow’s strength is explaining EVs in a way that ordinary car buyers can understand quickly.

Carwow’s EV stance can be described as EV-neutral to mildly EV-positive. The channel clearly treats electric cars as serious mainstream products and gives them high visibility, but it does not present EVs as automatically better than combustion cars. Petrol, hybrid, diesel, and performance cars remain important parts of the channel’s identity. This makes Carwow useful for understanding how EVs compete in the broader car market, not just within an EV-only comparison set.

One of Carwow’s distinctive formats is the drag race. These videos have helped the channel reach a very large global audience, and EVs often perform strongly in them because of instant torque and high power. However, drag races are entertainment first and buyer advice second. They are useful for showing performance and creating excitement around electric cars, but they should not be confused with real-world EV testing.

Carwow also has a wider platform beyond YouTube. The company operates as an online car marketplace for buying, selling, and comparing cars, with sites and editorial operations in multiple European markets. This commercial context shapes the channel’s role: it is not only a review outlet, but also part of a car-shopping platform designed to help consumers change cars.

The main limitation for EV-focused viewers is depth. Carwow does not usually provide the kind of detailed EV testing found on channels dedicated to charging curves, long-distance range, winter efficiency, battery behavior, or public-charging reliability. It is also strongly entertainment-aware, so some videos are designed more for reach and engagement than for deep buyer research. For serious EV shoppers, Carwow is best paired with more technical or EV-specialist channels.

Overall, Carwow is one of the most important mainstream car channels for EV visibility. It is especially useful for regular buyers, EV-curious viewers, and people who want electric cars explained within the wider car market. It is not the most technical EV channel and not an EV-only outlet, but its huge reach, polished presentation, and accessible reviews make it one of the most influential places where mainstream audiences encounter electric cars.