Cupra Tavascan VZ2 - long-term review

Just at the end of my time with the Tavascan, I was reminded why people near me might want an EV: the exemption from London's congestion charge. I don't think about the CC, even though I live just a few yards from the boundary. Because frankly there are many many other reasons, beyond the £15 CC charge for combustion cars, not to drive into central London. Like the fact it's £20-30 to park for two or three hours. And the fact journey times are tragically slow. I can get there in half the time on my pushbike. Or in the same time on the bus if it's raining or if I've been drinking.

But yeah, sometimes I do take the Tavascan in, f'rinstance as Dad taxi. And £15 a day was coming out of my bank every time I did. Huh? Turned out I'd registered the car for autopay on the new toll for the Blackwall tunnel, for which EVs aren't exempt, and the IT system had got confused and started charging the Tavascan for the C-zone too.

My account on Transport for London's hopelessly obtuse website didn't make this clear, and the call centre person was dismissive, yet out of the blue I got an email saying I was due a refund. Then came an actual paper cheque in the actual post. How quaint. I was half-expecting it to be signed by Sadiq Khan himself. In quill.

In other money news, what about electricity? The scores are in. In its time here it has covered 7,249 miles, for which I've put in 2,783kWh of electricity. A consumption of 2.6m/kWh. To stress, that's the grid-to wheel figure. The car claimed 3.0 on average, which is fair enough because you lose about 10 per cent in charging – the on-board charger heats up when charging on AC, and the battery heats and demands cooling when charging on DC.

The 3.0m/kWh figure on a 77kWh battery equates to 230 miles range, which is the average I got. That's actual range. The dash readout always claimed 290 miles-plus. Always.

Even 3.0m/kWh by the conventionally quoted battery-to-wheel measure is a bit crap. I didn't drive madly fast and much of it was summer. It varied between 2.4 (clear winter motorway with a headwind) and 3.5 (summer suburbs). The tyres are too big, the body too bulky, the motors too numerous for a better result. I got 3.3 to 3.9 out of a VW ID.3 in the same variety of driving last year. Same battery and rear motor; smaller body and tyres and no front motor.

Cost per mile? At 2.6m/kWh grid-to-wheel and average 60p/kWh it's 23p a mile for me, on a mix of public charging: overnight and rapid. On mostly overnight home charging you could get that down to 2p/mile. It's like the difference between doing your own cooking from your own allotment and hen house, and always eating at the Savoy Grill.

One of the last journeys was to Inverness, 600 miles in a day, back the next. There was a named storm blowing, but that was the only adventure. The Tavascan was smooth, its seat brilliant, its driver aids effective.

Charging was seamless – an hour and a quarter in three charges to get me there then a charge as I slept. It's not very wise to drive that far without a couple of breaks, so I can honestly say an EV took no longer than a petrol car would have. I haven't had a major public-charge snafu for tens of thousands of miles now. But I guess you need only one to be turned off the whole idea.

Anyway, the Tavascan. Absolutely nothing went wrong or deteriorated except for when an Uber nerfed it. But I was hoping some of the minor software glitches would be fixed OTA. They weren't.

For more detail on driving it, see my previous reports or our road test. Oh, I forgot to mention the stereo. It's Sennheiser, and sounds very alive. I always liked their headphones.

In this form the Tavascan is well equipped, quick and composed, if tough-riding. But I honestly think with slimmer tyres and just a rear motor (like the Born VZ) it'd be more fun as well as more efficient. The sloping rear end doesn't really hinder practicality, so I expect that's how it'll find buyers. It's the most style-forward of a huge phalanx of crossovers on the same mechanical bones.