Cupra Tavascan

• Report 1: Entering the Electric Age
• Report 2: My friend electric

Report 1: Entering the Electric Age

We welcome the new Cupra Tavascan to the Honest John fleet for the next three months.

Date: 3 April 2025 | Current mileage: 2310 | Claimed economy: 4.1 miles/kWh | Actual economy: 2.9 miles/kWh

As part of my job, I’ve driven more electric cars than I can remember. But I’ve never actually lived with one. Usually, I’d be presented with a fully charged test car, head out for a few hours and then hand it back. Or I’d have it at home for a week and simply plug in the three-pin charger that came with the car in order to get more juice.

As a result, I know all about the instant response from the accelerator and the freedom from the traditional constraints that an electric platform gives designers. But I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve never used a public charger and never had to think about range anxiety. All my own cars and my previous long-term test vehicles, have used combustion engines, the foibles of which I’m well used to.

So it’s with no small sense of intrigue that I welcome my new family car for the next three months. This Cupra Tavascan had just 2000 miles when it arrived at my house and I’ve now had a few weeks to get acquainted with it.

I confess, it’s been rather exciting. And confusing. Whether we like it or not, the automotive world is going electric, so the journey I’m embarking on is one that others will have to take sooner or later. There are lots of things to get one’s head around.

But before all the infrastructure, however, let’s talk about the car. This is the top-of-the-line Tavascan in VZ2 trim, which means it comes with the more powerful twin-motor setup, with 340PS and 545Nm of torque, and all-wheel drive (AWD). The battery is a 77kWh unit and efficiency-wise, Cupra says it’ll do up to 3.5 miles per kWh used.

The colour? Tavascan Blue. Unoriginal, but accurate in name. It was a no-cost option – in fact, there are no options on my car at all, meaning it can be bought off the shelf for £60,835 at the time of writing. While the Tavascan is an all-wheel-drive SUV it’s got no off-road inclinations at all. In keeping with the Cupra brand, it’s a sporty number with the aim of slapping a smile on your face when you’re behind the wheel.

All that power and instant torque will certainly help that, with an official 0-62mph time of 5.5 seconds despite its hefty weight – 2267kg in this AWD form. In my short time with the car so far I can confirm that it does indeed feel quick, with all the torque available as soon as your feet touch the pedal. There are various setup modes to play with to imbue the Tavascan with different characters, including the everything-to-11 Cupra mode, and I look forward to playing with them.

While it’s in my care, I’m aiming to have the Tavascan take over day-to-day family duties from our 2018 Seat Leon ST estate. Early signs are promising – the 540-litre boot, with an electric tailgate, is capacious and has easily held a child's scooter, bags and various other accoutrements for a day out over a weekend. There’s loads of rear legroom and it was easy to install a child seat using the Isofix mounting points.

Report 2: My friend electric

A month and many miles into my electric car ownership(ish) experience, and it’s been educational.

Date: 14 April 2025 | Current mileage: 4251 | Claimed economy: 4.1 miles/kWh | Actual economy: 2.8 miles/kW/h

A month and many miles into my electric car ownership(ish) experience, and it’s been educational. My wife and I use the Tavascan daily, including jaunts from our home in Sussex to Somerset, Birmingham, Leicestershire and beyond.

It’s been something of a baptism of fire when it comes to understanding the intricacies of charging, but I’m pleased to report that it’s been almost universally positive.

 

Home on the (battery) range

Before we get to the car itself, a few words on infrastructure – something that, as a relative electric noob, I was somewhat wary of. I’ll begin with a warning – be very careful when using a three-pin charger. In my ignorance, I had mine plugged into an extension cable – one suitable for EVs – but had forgotten that it was run through another, much less robust extension (a legacy of it being used to power my electric garage door).

A couple of weeks in, I smelled burning plastic in the garage. The plug had overheated and melted the less extension socket, which was not built for such heavy duty. Eek. Disaster averted, though through luck rather than judgement.

Thankfully, my new dedicated EV charger arrived soon afterwards. The process of installation of my new Easee One was painless – a very friendly electrician arrived at 8am, and three hours later he’d added an extra consumer unit to my existing fuse box, run a wire through the garage wall and mounted the charger by my front door. A quick setup with the smartphone app, into which I popped the details of my tariff, and we were away.

It’s easy to use: plug in, and charge. Had I a tariff that gave me cheaper electricity overnight, I could program the app to only charge at those off-peak times. However, as I’ve only got the car for a few months, I decided against changing my tariff for now.

(A side note: it turns out that EV-specific tariffs often require your car to be on the provider’s approved list to get the preferential rate. The Tavascan wasn’t on the lists – perhaps because it’s pretty new. The cheap electricity is for EVs and EVs only, and if the supplier can’t confirm that you’re charging the car rather than, say, running the washing machine, it won’t sign you up. Worth noting for future reference.)

 

Fast charging

Home charging’s been great – park, plug in, done. No need for petrol station trips, and no range anxiety for local drives.

Longer trips take a bit more planning, however. I’ve now used quite a few public fast chargers, and while it’s more of a faff than just stopping at the first fuel station I see, it hasn’t really been much of a problem.

The trickiest charge was the first one. After a trip up to Worcestershire, which the Tavascan managed on a single charge, I needed to charge overnight. Luckily my hotel had a BP Pulse rapid charger nearby. “Great,” I thought, “I can just leave it there overnight.” Not so. As it turns out, the fastest chargers will pile on extra charges if you’re plugged in for more than 90 minutes, in order to stop people hogging them. So I had to get up an hour early, plug the car in and go for a 7am coffee in order to have a full battery in time for the day ahead.

At other times though, I’ve just spent a couple of minutes planning each journey to make sure there’s a charger somewhere en route – and there always has been. I’ve tended to favour the larger multi-charger hubs to minimise the chances of a queue, but there have been numerous sites of all sizes to choose from. Google Maps lets you plot your route and will tell you what chargers are on the way, while Waze will do similar. The Tavascan’s own navigation system will also do it, but… well, Waze and Google Maps are better navigation systems overall.

Initially, I found it a chore to sign up for various providers apps in order to get the best price per kW, but have since discovered the Electroverse app, which consolidates access to many networks via a single app and RFID card. So far it’s worked on every fast charger I’ve tried. Easy.

With the Tavascan’s battery range well above 200 miles, and closer to 250 when it’s warm, I never have to worry about short journeys, and longer charges rarely take more than 20-30 minutes – just long enough for coffee and cake.

And the car?

There’s a lot to like about the Tavascan, and with a couple of thousand miles behind me, I feel like I know it well.

As a family car, it’s been very good. My five-year-old has loads of space in the back, and the boot’s is a decent size, and the hands-free electric boot lid works 90% of the time when you waggle your foot under the rear bumper (which is considerably better than most similar systems). Very useful when you’ve got your arms full.

The panoramic roof floods the interior with light, making it feel nice and airy even when cruising slowly through M25 traffic. Heated front seats and steering wheel have been a godsend on chilly mornings, and the recent warmer weather has seen my wife and I luxuriate in the ventilated function, too, with cold air blown onto sweaty backs.

Storage could be better. The funky F1-style halo design between the front seats looks great, but it takes up a lot of space where storage could be. There’s a wireless phone charger, a pair of cupholders and a tiny tray, and that’s it. Sure, the chilled armrest cubby is great (and huge), but there’s a load of unused capacity that, on longer trips, would be useful for odds and sods.

The bucket-style sporty seats are very comfortable, and the memory adjustment function has been useful for the easy swapping of drivers. There are no seat-back pockets for my daughter, though at least the wipe-clean material handles her muddy feet kicking them (despite orders to stop).

As expected of a Cupra, the Tavascan is fun to drive. All-wheel drive and 340PS means none-too-shabby acceleration, delivered with the instant zing inherent in electric drivetrains, despite its considerable weight. I noted when I first drove the Tavascan some months ago that the brakes felt inconsistent in their application, and that’s the same on this car too, although I have got used to its weird habit of needing extra pressure on the pedal as you slow down.

The ride, firm enough for solid cornering ability, is supple enough not to elicit complaints from passengers. Long journeys have passed in a very relaxing way, largely thanks to the decent Sennheiser sound system and the adaptive cruise control, which is a considerable mercy in stop-start motorway traffic.

Overall? A very good start – here’s hoping it continues.