Luke Wikner reports back on our Cupra Tavascan long-termer.

Cupra Tavascan V2 77kWh

P11D: £53,780   BiK: 2% I £18 (20%) / £36 (40%)  RANGE: 338 miles   ON FLEET RANGE: 311 miles   EFFICIENCY: 4.1mpkWh

Report 3:

 

 

 

1,750 miles in to Cupra Tavascan motoring and life is rosy. I am now completely used to the chunky dimensions of the coupe-SUV and it’s a really positive sign that the more time you spend with a car, the more you appreciate its qualities. My aforementioned short arms are now more-or-less adept at navigating the large touchscreen too.

I pointed out that I hadn’t seen another Tavascan on the road – which is still the case somehow – and that’s not for lack of looking either. At the fantastic Gridserve EV charging hub near Stevenage, I even had someone rush over to me and ask to sit in the back of the car just before I drove off. Her logic being that her current Kia Niro company car was due to be replaced, and she needed more legroom in the back for her growing family. FW editor John Challen often faces such issues with six-footers in his brood and this is one area where the latest Cupra excels. In fact, I challenge any similar-sized vehicle to beat its blend of comfort and ease of access and egress.

It’s certainly better in terms of getting out than our previous FW Fleet Volvo EX40, which had a very similar list price, and would likely be on a shortlist with the Tavascan as a result. Exiting and entering parking spaces is arguably even easier than that too, given the car’s amazing top view cameras.

AI is here to stay in our lives, and some of the things it can already do and will bring to the automotive sector in the future are astonishing. But even though these cameras are not new tech as such, the way they work amazes me every time. They are particularly useful – I’ve found – for knowing whether you’re in a parking bay or not. None of this getting out first to check whether your tyre being 1cm outside a parking bay will land you the most irritating £70 fine imaginable – the car does 99% of it for you.

I am, however, still sceptical of the Remote Park Assist self-parking function. With 21-inch wheels including beautiful copper detailing, the prospect of trusting the car’s brain (which is obviously much bigger than mine, but still) to not scrape an alloy on one of London’s uneven kerbs, makes me more than a little reticent. The function on the car that angles the relevant wing mirrors all the way down when reversing is great in this respect though.

For now, I’m going to bask in the car’s 2% BiK rate until it rises to a still incredibly reasonable 3% for the 2025/26 tax year in April. In the Tavascan, for a 20% taxpayer, this represents an extra £9 per month (@ £27 per month) heading out of your pocket and into HMRC’s coffers, which when you live with the Tavascan 24/7, still feels like an absolute bargain. And the ownership experience will hopefully only improve with a new 7kW home charger being fitted in the next 6 weeks, which should communicate seamlessly with the Cupra. More on that next time…

Report 2:

I mentioned in the Tavascan’s first report that I was still very much in my honeymoon period with the car, and familiarity with the Cupra brand and previous models on our fleet – Formentor PHEV and Born – has bred content. Tavascan certainly feels bigger than both its stablemates, and tips the scales at over 200kg heavier than a Born with an equivalent-sized battery. In short, it feels sold, substantial and very planted on the road.

Such familiarity has lent itself to me having no issue in principle with pretty much everything being controlled by the big, centrally mounted touchscreen display.

However, I’ve found that the Tavascan multimedia set-up often requires me pressing more buttons than needed to toggle between, say, the climate control and the navigation system. There may be a way of personalising this but I haven’t yet got round to investigating yet. I’m also glad the screen isn’t any further away, as when my driving position is spot on, it’s a bit of a stretch for my disproportionately short arms (discovered while driving various cars over the years). A word on the driving position here though. The Cupra Tavascan seats are simply wonderful, and the driving position is nigh-on perfect. There’s good visibility, aside from the chunky A-pillars and the fact that the dashboard ambient lights reflect in the driver’s wing mirror at night, and it’s hard to imagine a more comfortable car in which to cover its 300-mile+ range in.

First report:

So here it is… Cupra’s latest electric vehicle – the Tavascan – looking like a chunky, angrily sculpted coupé and offering, in 77KwH V2 form, 286hp, a 330+-mile range and 0-62mph in 6.8 seconds.

The latest addition to the FW Fleet also comes in the no-cost option metallic Atacama Desert, which not only looks understated and cool, but is also excellent at masking the worst detritus wintery roads can encase it with.

At this point, I would normally offer an opinion saying it looks better in silver etc (it is only available in three additional colours – silvery white, dark grey and blue) but three weeks into my stewardship, I’ve still not seen any others on the road… or anywhere in fact.

This detail probably accounts for the amount of attention the Tavascan has received, whereby perfect strangers have the urge to come and say hello and introduce themselves. The conversation always starts with: “I’ve never seen one of these.” To which my reply is still: “Well, I’ve only seen one!”

It’s also interesting to note the increasing popularity of Cupra and the increased acceptance from people who may only have a passing interest in cars, outside the fleet and motoring spheres. Compared to back in 2022, when our FW Fleet’s previous Cupra Born drew confused glances from people wondering what it was… those were generally enquiries about the badge and brand, let alone the specific model.

The fleet market has had a huge part to play in Cupra’s success story, and there’s no doubt the Cupra Formentor, particularly when it arrived in 2021 in PHEV form, created a fantastic halo effect for the brand, which the Born built upon impressively. Now it’s the turn of its bigger brother, the Tavascan.

At £53,835 on the road, Cupra’s latest EV is not cheap, but it’s hard to work out what additional spec one could add to it to make the general ownership experience more enjoyable.

In this respect, it’s probably the fleet favourite in the Tavascan range, offering front, rear and top-view cameras, 21-inch alloys, a wonderful panoramic sunroof and a whole suite of active and passive safety systems.

It has the obligatory heated (and electrically adjustable) seats – in innovative sustainable microsuede fabric that doesn’t suffer from leather’s too-hot-in-summer-too-cold-in-winter properties – as well as a heated steering wheel and heated door mirrors.

The optional £1,335 Winter Pack is worth considering too, which includes heated rear seats, heat pump and a heated front windscreen… because, let’s face it, no-one enjoys scraping ice off their windscreen at 6am.

A UK winter is not an EV’s friend at the best of times but the Tavascan seems pretty well equipped to deal with this, and offering a range of well over 300 miles – before allowing for heaters on and less efficient batteries – there should be no worries for even the lengthiest of journeys that I do.

I’m definitely still in my honeymoon period with the car, but it does have a few quirks and curiosities that will take some getting used to – more details on those next time.