CUPRA Born Review

As part of my smart home solar energy project we have purchased our first electric vehicle (EV), a CUPRA Born V2. It has replaced three of our internal combustion engined (ICE) cars (a Mazda 6 2.2TD, a Mazda 2 and my Fisher Fury R1 kitcar), leaving us with the CUPRA Born, a 1990 Eunos Roadster, a 2018 Mazda MX-5 ND and a Mazda CX-30. We had a lot of cars!

At the time of purchase, there was a long lead time for the CUPRA Born but, our Ipswich dealership was new and had a stock of cars to help launch the dealership. This meant we had the option to take an existing car immediately. If we wanted to order a bespoke configuration, it would have been a 6 to 9 month wait. This was a big factor in our decision to take an existing showroom car, which was not exactly to our preferred specification.

We test drove a CUPRA Born V3 as a family of four, because the plan is that all four of us (myself, my daughter (24) and my son (22) and my wife) will be insured to drive it. We test drove the car on the Saturday, loved it, and signed the paperwork to buy it on the Monday. The CUPRA Born is based on the same platform as the VW ID3.

Our car has an on-the-road price of £37,940. We purchased it on a 3-year finance deal, with the plan being that we change the car after 3 years. My assumption is that EV technology will have moved on a long way in three years time.

A primary goal of my smart home solar energy project is that we charge our CUPRA Born for free, throughout the whole year. This will mostly be achieved using solar power and our smart Zappi EV charger but we also have some free public EV chargers close by. My wife also has access to EV chargers at her work site. My smart home energy management project plays a big part in achieving this goal.

Specification

Our car is the CUPRA Born V2 in 'Geyser Silver' (a £565 option) and with the 'Tech L' pack (a £740 option). It is rear wheel drive.

Our car comes with the 58kWh battery, giving a range of up to 225 miles. There is a 77kWh option with a range of 320+ miles but, this adds about £4000 to the price.

The Born weighs 1811kg, which is a fair bit more than the 1416kg of our CX-30 but it carries 35kg of fuel. So the difference is 360kg or 794lbs.

Tech L Pack

As I said before, we didn't feel the need for this option but, we had to take an existing car and our came with it. It includes:

Collection

Insuring the CUPRA Born for myself, my wife, my daughter and son to drive was cheaper than I thought it would be. I'm paying £334 for fully comprehensive cover with protected no-claims.

We picked up our CUPRA Born on Saturday 6th August 2022. The whole process was easy and our overall impression of the Ipswich dealership is very good. They have a friendly sales team, who were not pushy and provided lots of honest and useful advice.

Initial Driving Experience

The first thing that hits you when in the CUPRA Born is that it is a really comfortable car to be in. The second thing is the expansive windscreen, which goes down really low, giving the impression that you are in the cockpit of a plane or helicopter. And then the Born is just very easy to drive. The difference between 'D' mode and 'B' mode is very evident as the regenerative braking slows you quite quickly. The 'auto hold' feature works just like the equivalent automatic hand brake in our Mazda CX-30 but, in the Born you don't have to switch it on at the start of each journey and it's smoother in operation.

The main instrument display is very clear, with lots of useful information. Oddly, the milometer is only displayed at the start and end of each journey.

Beneath the battery symbol and range is a green and blue bar. The thin part of this bar represents the scale of regenerative braking (green) or load from the battery (blue). A thicker blue bar goes up as you press the accelerator and a thicker green bar shows the amount of regenerative braking. Sometimes the thin green bar is shortened. This means the battery is nearly full and there is less regenerative braking available. When the battery gets below 12%, the blue bar is shortened and the car has noticeably less power available.

The head-up display is also very useful, with the current speed limit and navigation instructions. The position on the windscreen can be changed to make it easier to see for smaller drivers.

The large, central touch-screen display has a lot of functionality on it and it works pretty well. It could be a bit more logical though. A nice touch are touch sensitive bars at the bottom for changing volume and for air conditioning temperature control.

The feel through the steering wheel is really good, impressively so and really well weighted. This sets the whole tone of the driving experience. There is no hiding the weight of the car under heavy braking but, the brake feel is good and provides a lot of confidence. In an electric car you use the brakes a lot less, because of the regenerative braking. With the adaptive cruise control on, you can drive through town or on faster roads and rarely really need to touch the brake pedal. It's a whole different style of driving compared to a petrol/diesel car but, one that is so much easier. The vehicle weight is also evident in tighter corners. It's never going to be a sports car but, its still hugely impressive to drive. The acceleration feels much faster than it really is, because of the linear torque delivery from standstill. Overtaking is really easy though and it feels rapid. I've always preferred cars that feel faster than the really are and the CUPRA Born meets this brief.

Manual

The CUPRA Born doesn't come with a thick manual in the glove box. You have to download the 325-page manual online. Note that when trying to print a few pages of the manual, the page numbers you request printed might not correspond to the ones that actually get printed! The page numbering goes out of sync part way through the document.

Living With It

Keyless Entry & Exit

Simply having a key about you means you can unlock the car by simply pulling the door handle. The car can also be started and driven. On exiting the car, it automatically switches off. This doesn't unlock the other doors or the boot though, which seems like odd behaviour. It's especially annoying if more than just the driver is trying to get into the car.

This behaviour is because our car has the "Safe" security system. It's well worth reading the manual pages to understand how this feature operates and how you can control it, so that other people can easily get into the car as well. This "Safe" feature can be disabled in the vehicle settings if required but, you should read the manual to fully understand all of the implications in doing this.

CUPRA ID

6th August - Dealership

Whilst we were at the dealership, I was asked download the My CUPRA iOS app and create a CUPRA ID. It's "your key to the SEAT & CUPRA digital world". Whilst at the dealership, we failed to get the car registered with the My CUPRA app, so we left to try it again later.

Note:  The dealership told me to use the 'login using email', rather than scanning the 2D barcode as it is more reliable.

Around 6pm, I tried to login to the website again, to see if I could find out why I couldn't connect our Born. I managed to do a software update and this improved some things but, I still could not get it to connect to the app. I raised a fault with CUPRA Customer Services and with the CUPRA Digital Support team.

7th August - Home

Out of desperation, I logged into the CUPRA ID website again this morning and fully populated my profile, along with a portrait photo. I don't know if this would make a difference but I'd run out of things to try.

It worked! For the first time in over 50 attempts, the login succeeded and I am now the primary profile on the central display. It really shouldn't be this difficult!

It worked! For the first time in over 50 attempts, the login succeeded and I am now the primary profile on the central display. It really shouldn't be this difficult!

When I went to use my profile in the car, it required my 'S-PIN' to gain access to my profile data. You can set it to remember this though.

My CUPRA App

The My Cupra app now shows our car and allows control of some features. The key pieces of information available are battery state and estimated range. It also tells you the total distance driven, which is useful for my cost saving calculations

Note:  The app uses km & km/h by default. I went into Profile, Account, Units to set this to miles and mph.

With my profile added to the car as the 'primary user', I created another CUPRA ID for my wife (via the app) and populated the profile (via the website). You can only have one primary user and adding her as a guest user worked. The problem with this is that her app on her iPhone gives her no useful information or control of the vehicle :-(

I'm recording a baseline battery state v estimated range for now:

Note:  I don't think for a minute that we will get this range in normal driving conditions but, it I'm interested to see how close it really is.

Driver Profiles

So far, we have only set up 2 driver profiles, one for me and one for my wife. My son and daughter haven't felt the need to create one yet. These profiles customise many aspects of the car to your personal preferences (air conditioning temperatures, connected mobile device, etc.). In the Born V3, it will also adjust seating positions but, we don't have this on our V2.

Steering Wheel

The steering wheel is the perfect size for this car and has a nice feel to it. It is both height and reach adjustable. The flat at the bottom provides even more leg room.

Rather than describe the wheel buttons in detail, it's simpler to show the page from the manual. Note that some of the buttons are swiped rather than pressed.

Voice Control

More to come on this later, when I've had a chance to try it out.

Apple & CarPlay

The Born features good support for Apple smartphones with a wireless charging cradle and CarPlay. I'm a huge fan of Apple CarPlay as it makes some of my favourite apps extremely accessible and hands free, many with Siri's voice control.

One of the things I love about the CUPRA Born is that it has a proper smartphone holder, which also features wireless charging. I know some people have had issues with this feature but my iPhone 13 Pro Max seems to work fine.

For longer journeys, I would typically plug my phone in because it stays cooler this way.

Charging

I will be using the Myenergi Zappi smart EV charger to charge this car, once it has been installed as part of my smart home solar energy project. The goal is to only use free, solar energy to charge it.

In the mean-time, this leaves us with an electric car and no way at home to charge it. Fortunately, we have three public Pod Point chargers at our local Tesco store, just a few minutes walk away. The best bit is that they are free to use, though the car park has a 3 hour stay limit.

The CUPRA Born can be fast charged using chargers up to 120kW and these have a high-current CCS charging cable attached to them.

Note:  Typically, electric cars are only charged to 80% capacity for every day use (to extend the life of the battery), so the 58kWh battery only requires 46.4kWh to fully charge. It will be always be charged from a much higher level than 0% too. In August 2022, our solar panels averaged about 42kWh per day, though our house uses about 10.5kWh every day.

Based on battery capacity and range, each kWh in the Cupra Born battery is about 4 miles travelled. Put another way, this is 0.25kWh per mile. So when you use a public and chargeable EV charger, such as ChargePoint at 50p/kWh, that equates to 12.5p per mile. For comparison, a my petrol engined cars cost about 21p per mile.

When we stayed at a friends house, I tried to set up a charging schedule (00:30 to 04:30), to use a cheap night rate tariff with Octopus Go. It was harder than I had hoped to configure this but, it did work as planned.

Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC)

The adaptive cruise control (ACC) is not perfect but it is very close. I thought the system in our Mazda CX-30 was impressive but this is better, simply for being married to an electric drive train with no gears. Adaptive cruise control just works so much better in an electric car and works right down to 1mph. It will even will bring you to a complete stop and then you can carry on again with a press on the accelerator. It recognises bicycles, cars and lorries too, displaying an matching icon on the instrument panel and the head-up display. The speed control 'buttons' are touch/push sensitive and you swipe them, to change your speed in 5mph increments. The touch/swipe buttons are less intuitive than the equivalent controls in our CX-30 but, you get used to them.

One reason the ACC works better than in our Mazda CX-30, is because as soon as you indicate to overtake, the speed ramps up quickly. In the CX-30, the delay is just longer. In the Born, the ACC can also be configured to react dynamically to speed limits and the road layout.

The ACC can be fooled though. I've seen it think a cyclist on the pavement was in the road in front of me. It occasionally doesn't recognise gaps between traffic and brakes, despite the gap being large enough. This is more of an issue if the gap is at an angle to the road direction. The speed control buttons are push and slide (to change in 5mph increments) and I don't like them as much as regular push buttons. On a few occasions the heel of my thumb on the wheel has changed the speed by accident.

Lighting

There are some very nice lighting features on the Born, all of the lights being LED. The side mirrors project a CUPRA logo onto the floor at night, which is pointless but quite cool. The rear side lights feature a Born logo too. The lights do a wacky start up sequence at night. The rear full width light looks really good. I also like the additional LED lights on the front that are angled and light up where you are going around a corner.

The automatic headlight dipped/high beam switching is really good and it reacts to traffic ahead really quickly.

Parking

The Tech L pack means that our Born can park itself. I never have any issues parking and I'm not sure I trust it to do a better job but, I might get around to trying this one day. The rear parking camera is really good though and it also shows you where the car is likely to end up based on the applied steering wheel angle. It makes things look closer than they are though, so even driving right up close to objects, leaves a 6" to 9" gap.

Wheels & Tyres

The Born has various sized wheels, depending on the model. Our V2 has 19" rims with 205/50R19 tyres, which are set at a fairly high 36psi all round. Spare wheels are hard to get hold of, so you really don't want to damage them.

A few owners have lowered their Born, to reduce the gap around the wheel but, I'm not keen to compromise the ride and handling by doing this.

A few owners have mentioned excessive tyre wear. It is a heavy vehicle and with a lot of torque. After 4000 miles, the tread depth is 5mm on the rears and 5.5mm on the fronts.

Measured tyre tread depth as of 12/06/2024 and 23138 miles: FL = 4.5mm, FR = 4.5mm, RL = 3.5mm, RR = 3.5mm

Dashcam

I've installed a Nextbase 522GW dashcam. It's a 1440p/30fps "QUAD HD" dashcam with WiFi, Bluetooth, built-in Alexa, GPS Emergency Response, in-car 280° / 360, with a rear facing camera. My son and daughter are already experienced drivers but, this gives me a bit more peace of mind.

Fitting it was easy. The dashcam comes with a plastic tool to peel back rubber trim and there were large gaps in the head-lining behind the rubber trim. The only standard power socket (there are lots of USB C ones in the cabin) I could find was in the boot but, the power lead for the dashcam was easily long enough to reach it. As I had to run the cable for the rear camera from front to rear, it made sense to run both cables via this route at the same time. I managed to hide the cables really well, up inside the head-lining from the rear-view mirror, all the way to the boot.

I've been so impressed with this dashcam, I've bought another one to go in our Mazda CX-30.

Roof Bars

Despite having holes that look suitable for mounting roof bars, the manual very clearly states that the CUPRA Born roof is not designed to withstand roof bars or a roof rack.

Mazda CX-30 Comparison

It's worth saying a few words about our Mazda CX-30 compares with the CUPRA Born. Both cars are very similar size (just a few centimetres in it), similar in layout and seating. Our CX-30 has the Skyactiv X engine with Spark Controlled Compression Ignition (SPCCI), which is really innovative and one reason why we bought it. Electric cars are always going to be more expensive than their ICE equivalents and the CX-30 is significantly cheaper than the Born.

In the rush to make electric cars, a lot of the manufacturers have under estimated the software development required and abandoned many of the good user interfaces concepts that took years to develop and refine. Physical switches are good and they work well! If Mazda made an all-electric car like the CX-30 and with the range of the CUPRA Born, it would be brilliant in my view.

Summary

We absolutely love our CUPRA Born. It's a great looking car and just effortless to drive. It's incredibly comfortable and the performance is impressive using the 'Comfort' profile. Using the 'Performance' profile makes it feel properly rapid and it feels much faster than the 0 to 62mph of 7.3 seconds would suggest. This is largely down to the huge torque from standstill. The top speed of 99 mph is plenty for any UK journey we would ever make. I did a test on a private road and it accelerated all the way up to 102mph but, would not go any faster. It's not perfect but, it is brilliant.

The car is spacious and can easily carry the four adults in our family. It also has good head room in the rear seats for my 6' 3" son. The boot is a good size, slightly bigger than that of our CX-30. There is also some storage space under the boot floor in both cars.

The only issue we have had so far was the inability to connect it to the My CUPRA app but, this was resolved itself on the second day of ownership.

Tips

Ownership Diary

All the statistics and energy savings for 2022, including the CUPRA Born and our other transport are covered on my Smart Home Energy Blog & Analysis 2022 page.

October 2024

Our Born developed a known fault with one of the rear driveshafts, which was fixed under warranty.

With the weather turning colder, I checked the tyre tread depth. With 29,000 miles now done, the rear (driven) were below 3mm and the fronts are still at 4.5mm. I paid £408 to get the rear Continental Eco Contact 6 Contiseal 215/50 R19 T (53) tyres replaced with the same make/model of tyre. This improved both the grip and ride.

May 2024

What started out as a stone chip, expanded into a 8" crack up the windscreen. It was a remarkably simple process to get it fixed by Autoglass, through our insurance. It was done in just a few hours at their local centre and we paid the £115 excess.

April 2024

As we have solar panels, I track our energy generation and usage, so I know exactly how many kWh we have put into our Born to do the 21,531 miles it has travelled. It's averaged 3.3 miles per kWh and cost 4.1p per mile on average. We have also saved £2,863.49 by not buying petrol.

December 2023

As of December 2023 have driven 16,000 miles in our CUPRA Born and have paid just £590 for electricity to charge it. It's been brilliant and has inspired me to build a sports EV with my son.

December 2022

We had a weeks holiday in somerset just before Christmas and took our CX-30 instead because we needed the roof box. The weather was really cold (-9°C at times), so using the ICE car made life easier.

We have done 4219 miles and 525 miles this month. We have used 65.1kWh of free solar energy and imported 124.0kWh on the Octopus Go tariff at 7.5p/kWh, costing £9.30. 34.4% of the energy put into our Born is from our solar panels. The rest is Octopus Go cheap night rate at 7.5p/kWh. 24.6% of the solar energy generated this month has gone into our Born. Petrol averaged £1.57 per litre, so we have saved £90.62 this month.

November 2022

We have done 3694 miles and 985 miles this month. We have used 67.0kWh of free solar energy and imported 214.4kWh on the Octopus Go tariff at 7.5p/kWh, costing £16.08. 23.8% of the energy put into our Born is from our solar panels. The rest is Octopus Go cheap night rate at 7.5p/kWh. 26.2% of the solar energy generated this month has gone into our Born. Petrol averaged £1.625 per litre, so we have saved £177.96 this month.

October 2022

We have done 2709 miles in and 1009 miles this month. The slow charger has been used 4 times, costing £7.12. We imported a total of 99.5kWh to charge the CUPRA Born. We also did a long trip to Malmesbury and used public chargers, so we have spent a total of £43.30 on charging this month. Petrol has come down in price to about £1.63 per litre, so we have saved £156.08 this month and £510.51 so far in 2022.

September 2022

This weekend (10th/11th) will mark 1000 miles using free electricity, saving us £224 in petrol.

Got a call today (14th) from my solar installer to confirm the installation date as the middle of next month. I want an at home option to charge the Born sooner than this, so I've bought a Masterplug 10A 2.3kW Type 2 EV charger with 5m cable. In the 4 hours of 7.5p/kWh on Octopus Go each night, this means we can put 9.2kWh (about 16%) into the car battery, which is more than we typically use in a day. It will also be useful when visiting relatives.

Put the Born on a scheduled charge on the slow charger to see how well it works. In 4 hours (from 00:30 to 04:30 on Octopus Go 7.5p/kWh rate) it went from 43% to 56%, an increase of 13% and 33 miles range. This is slightly lower than expected but the charger says it only put in 8.6kWh and not the 9.2kWh expected.

August 2022

We collected our car on Saturday 6th August 2022 and managed 715 during the month, using free electricity only. This was a saving of £160 in petrol.

We did our first longish run (104 miles each way) to a friends house and the car was brilliant. We could have made it there and back with the starting 83% battery charge but, I didn't risk it and used his car charger to top it back up over night (Octopus Go at 7.5p/kWh) to 80%. The total cost was about £2.17.

In the morning, I saw a bug in the app (which is a known bug apparently) where the battery level was correctly displayed but the estimated mileage was not.

Looking at the driving stats, we are averaging 3.9 miles per kWh, which is impressive for the mix of driving we are currently doing.

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