Cupra Tavascan

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.

I’ve not yet done much playing with the infotainment system, as wireless Apple CarPlay is included, so most of the navigation and entertainment thus far has come through that, with my phone chucked into the wireless phone charger on the centre console. My five-year-old daughter is a big fan of the customisable ambient lighting, and after 20 minutes of scrolling through the various settings, we settled on a purple hue on the doors with blue on the dashboard.

Speaking of lights, there’s quite the show at night when you unlock the car, with the matrix LED headlights performing a merry dance, and the Cupra logo on the bonnet lights up, too – something I only discovered when the man at the McDonald’s drive-thru commented on it. The matrix lights are something I’m particularly looking forward to trying out – there are lots of unlit country roads in my neck of the woods, and having lights that maximise output without dazzling oncoming traffic could prove very useful.

More than just the car, I’m looking forward to seeing how life with an electric car is different to that of a petrol or diesel. I don’t yet have a proper home charger (although one is on the way), so for now I’ll be using a mixture of three-pin plug and public chargers to keep the Tavascan topped up.

I don’t really know how this is going to go – I think the car will have enough downtime to be topped up on the slow home charge most of the time, but with some longer journeys on the horizon I’ll have to take the plunge into the world of fast chargers.

In theory, the Tavascan can cover up to 324 miles on a full battery charge, although I’m experienced enough to know that real-world range will likely be considerably less, especially as it’s still pretty cold. I worry that not being able to stop just about anywhere for a two-minute fill-up with petrol will be something of a culture shock, but maybe it’s just a fear of the unknown.

The car’s high-techery should also let me do a few things I can’t do in a normal petrol car, using the Cupra Connect app. However, so far I can’t get the car and the phone app to talk to each other, so some tech support will be needed before the next write-up. Stay tuned.