Cupra Born V3: long-term test review

Verdict

Instead of highlighting how the VW Group is now a software-led company, the Born is doing rather too good a job of demonstrating that Cupra can make cars, but struggles to get the ones and zeros in the code of its infotainment set-up properly aligned. This vehicle’s biggest flaws are all in the digital realm.

• Mileage: 5,311
• Efficiency: 3.3 miles/kWh

We need to talk about infotainment. Ever since the arrival of the Mk8 Golf, the VW Group’s take on that big screen in the dashboard has been under fire.

So while I was looking forward to our Cupra Born’s arrival, it was with some trepidation that I started delving into what its infotainment system does well, and where it falls short. I’d been prepared for a bit of faffing to get my phone hooked up, I knew that the slider control would be fiddly to use, and I wasn’t expecting a great deal from the in-house navigation. 

What has caught me by surprise, though, is how some of the basic vehicular functions just don’t quite work how they should. As an example, the Born is supposed to offer geo-tagged charging routines – allowing me, in theory, to save my driveway as a location and then tell the vehicle to only charge between certain hours when it’s parked there. It could make a big difference to my bills, given that I use Octopus’s EV-specific tariff with four hours of off-peak rates in the middle of the night.

Trouble is, the Cupra just ignores its own advice. It knows it’s in the location marked ‘home’; it knows that I have a routine set for that place, whereby it should only charge between specified hours; it even knows the times concerned. So what does it do when I plug in at 6pm in the evening? It starts charging regardless.

This means I’ve had to introduce a further routine, which involves me logging into the Cupra app on my phone every single evening, and reminding the car, remotely, that I want it to charge from midnight onwards. “Oh!” the app exclaims. “You want to change a routine?!” Except I don’t; I just want it to recognise and pay attention to the one that’s already saved in the system.

It’s hardly a deal-breaker, but if you scour the owner’s club forums for the MEB-platform vehicles like the Born and VW ID.3, you’ll find plenty of Idea saying that scheduled charging is just a broken feature that needs mending. It seems strange to me that they haven’t managed to get such a fundamental part of the EV experience working properly, more than two years after the first MEB car appeared.

I should probably be thankful for the fact that the scheduling for the heater does work, because it proved a godsend during the recent cold snap. The ability to pre-condition the cabin – with warm or cold air – is something that UK residents probably really only get the benefit of for a third of the year. But again, making adjustments to the saved settings from within the smartphone app is a hit-and-miss affair. Too often there’s a spinning wheel of doom that forces you to doubt whether the VW Group servers have really got much of a handle on things.

On a more basic level, the Born is actually a pretty decent EV. I recently took my family to Warwick Castle for a day out, a round trip of just over 190 miles, all but 15 of them on motorways. Temperatures were hovering around five degrees, so I’d expected the fully charged battery to be pretty much used up by the time we got home. Instead, the Born used less than 40 per cent of its capacity on the way up the M40, so I could cruise back in relative comfort. 

During the journey, my Android Auto hook-up was rock solid (allowing me to experience the latest improvements to that software’s interface), and the Born demonstrated a solid blend of body control and ride quality, even on our car’s 20-inch wheels.

It shows that Cupra and the wider VW Group haven’t forgotten how to engineer a car. It’s just that they’ve got a bit ahead of themselves when claiming that they’re software-led companies. Our experience with the Born so far suggests that with code, the devil truly is in the detail.

Cupra Born V3: first report

We look forward to seeing if the Cupra Born – the Spanish brand’s first EV - will be a perfect fit

• Mileage: 3,687
• Efficiency: 3.4 miles/kWh

It will probably not surprise you to learn that I’m not much of an athlete, but I do have a penchant for a certain brand of trainers that offer a little more than the norm. We’re not talking extreme cross-country running here, but rather a standard format, made a little nicer with plusher, softer materials and funky colours.

Now, it seems, I have the car to match – because a Cupra Born has just joined the fleet, and I’m going to spend the next few months getting a feel for the Volkswagen Group’s young, dynamic brand and what its car delivers over a comparable VW.

The Born is Cupra’s first pure-electric model and as such, it’s a close relative of the VW ID.3. I even suspect that if you put the two vehicles side by side, you’d notice some significant similarities in their wheelbases, overhangs and rooflines.

But where the Born follows the same trend as my footwear is how it takes the ID.3 – which ultimately ended up looking a bit humdrum compared with its original concept – and gives it a slightly sportier edge. Whether or not this is really suited to a pure-electric vehicle is a matter for debate, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the more rakish nose and the aero adornments on the side sills do give the Cupra a sharper look overall. Our car’s Rayleigh Red paintjob helps as well, of course; it’s considerably more striking than anything you’ll find in the VW’s palette. So I’ve ended up with a pair of Onitsuka Tigers on wheels, basically.

As a brand, Cupra is pitched slightly above VW – somewhere between it and Audi, you’d reason, with a more sporting direction – and we’re certainly giving the Born every chance to impress between now and next spring. Our example is the range-topping V3, complete with the largest battery capacity available in the range – 77kWh – and a 227bhp rear-mounted motor with 310Nm of torque. It means the Cupra can sprint from 0-62mph in seven seconds, which is relatively modest by EV standards, but still up there with most hot hatchbacks.

It’s not exactly cheap, this Born, at more than £43,000 – but V3 does bring everything bar the kitchen sink on the standard-kit list. There’s interior ambient lighting, 20-inch alloy wheels, LED headlights and tail-lights, an augmented-reality head-up display, heated 12-way adjustable front seats with massage function, rain-sensing wipers, and a 12-inch touchscreen infotainment system.

Our car then has a few extras on top of that – the metallic paint job for starters, but also what Cupra calls ‘Tech Pack Large’. It’s basically park assist, in practical terms, although the £775 bundle does also include a wireless phone charger and keyless entry (useful features), and vehicle-to-vehicle networking, which is markedly less useful, for the time being at least.

My first impressions are that the Born is a well judged creation. The cabin feels a little more upmarket than the sister VW’s, with plusher fabrics and some natty cushioned material on top of the dashboard. It’s sharper dynamically too, plus quicker to respond to steering inputs, and so far at least, the sports suspension feels just on the right side of tolerable on UK roads.

Meanwhile, the rest of the package is bang on what the MEB project was designed to deliver: generous family-car space in a vehicle that’s actually a little smaller than a conventionally powered VW Golf. I already wish there was a proper ‘frunk’ to store soaking-wet charging cables, but cluttered boot aside, my two-plus-one family fits in quite well. It’ll be interesting to see if, by the end of six months with me, the Born feels like a comfy pair of well worn trainers.

*Insurance quote from AA (0800 107 0680) for a 42-year-old in Banbury, Oxon, with three points.