When we first tested the Cupra Born we were so impressed that we named it Small Electric Car of the Year. But does it continue to impress when you live with it every day?...
The car Cupra Born 58kWh V3 150kW Run by James Tute, senior sub-editor
Why we’re running it To see if our Small Electric Car of the Year still makes sense as commuter and leisure transport if you don’t have access to a home charger
Needs to Deliver on the promise of a fun driving experience, low running costs and good practicality, while having enough range for weekend getaways
Mileage 547 List price £38,390 Target Price £38,390 Price as tested £38,390 Official range 263 miles Test range 260 miles Options fitted Vapor Grey paint (£0), Granite Grey Dinamica bucket seats (£0), Tool kit for 19in and 20in wheels (£0)
2 June 2022 – Born to run
Be honest, did you ever expect to see electric cars buzzing around the streets in the numbers they do now? I certainly didn’t – yet here I am, running a Cupra Born as a company car.
In case you haven’t been introduced, the Born is a small electric car built by sporty Spanish brand Cupra around the same structure as the Volkswagen ID.3. Since January, it’s also been What Car?’s Small Electric Car of the Year. In other words, it’s top of its class, and if you buy one, it’s a safe bet you’ll be chuffed with it.
Our Car of the Year judges praised the model’s combination of practicality and driving fun, and over the next few months I’ll be testing both those and more during day-to-day city centre driving and on weekend trips away.
But the Born needs to tick another box for me. Or, to put it another way, it needs to answer a crucial question: if (like me) you can’t have a home charger, why on Earth would you want to run a small electric car? After all, there’s no end of cheap and efficient conventional small cars knocking around that’ll cost you a lot less to buy than a Born. They’re all compatible with good old-fashioned petrol pumps, too.
Well, if (again, like me) your routine takes in Central London, it’s not that simple. In the least polluting conventional cars, you pay £15 a day for the Congestion Charge. If your vehicle isn’t clean enough to be exempt from the Ultra-Low Emissions Zone fee, you can double that. Electric cars dodge both charges at the moment, so for some drivers they make hundreds of pounds a month worth of sense.
Of course, I might discover that the quirks of the public charging network make it impossible to top up the Born’s battery regularly enough for the journeys I do. That seems unlikely, though – my early experiences suggest that while there’ll be some hassle, it probably won’t be enough to outweigh the gains.
I’ll address the charging question in a future report, and in the meantime, it brings us neatly on to my car’s spec… It has a 58kWh battery (you can also have a 77kWh one), giving the car an official range of more than 250 miles. That powers a 150kW (201bhp) motor that’s good for a 0-62mph time of just 7.3sec.
You can have the Born in three trim levels, V1, V2 and V3, and I’ve got a V3 for one simple reason: my back. I’m 6ft 3in, and if I don’t get the right seating position sorted before a long drive, I pay the price for days. The V3 gets front bucket seats with 12-way electric adjustment, pneumatic lumbar support and a massage function.
On top of the funky chairs, the Born has loads of what I call ‘stress-reduction kit’ – i.e. gadgets that help take the strain out of sharing chaotic London roads with pedestrians, cyclists and mopeds, while avoiding slipping over the 20mph (camera-enforced) speed limits or getting stuck in the wrong lane.
Impressively, even the entry-level V1 gets many of my favourites, including adaptive cruise control with a speed limiter, sat-nav, lane assist, a dynamic road-sign display and automatic emergency braking. The V2 adds a head-up display, which projects your speed, the speed limit and sat-nav instructions on the windscreen in front of you.
The interior itself looks smart, feels good, and has plenty of space for four adults, while the boot is easily big enough for weekends away with my partner. In fact, the only negative so far is a blind-spot to my left as I pull out of T-junctions. I might be able to resolve this by fiddling with the seating position (again), so watch this space.
In other words, so far, so good. The electric future I never expected is definitely here – and it’s winning me over, one motor-driven journey at a time.
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Keyword: Cupra Born long-term test review