The smell of burning plastic is rarely good, and so it turned out in my garage. I suddenly realised that the robust extension cable that I’d plugged our long-term Cupra Tavascan’s three-pin charging cable into wasn’t itself plugged directly into the mains – it was plugged into a common-or-garden extension lead of the kind you’d use for charging your phone. Or, in my case, my electric garage door. Oops.
As it turns out, electric cars draw quite a lot of power, and the little four-plug extension couldn’t deal with it, and melted. Luckily, before anything caught fire. Still, a close shave, and a reminder to be very careful when mating a high-draw electrical device into your home system.
Alternatively, you could do what I did about two days later, and have a proper electric car charger fitted. A very nice electrician turned up, drilled a hole in the garage wall and added a new fusebox to my existing consumer unit, and I now have a brand-new and dare I say rather stylish charger on the front of my house. Not only is it properly wired to avoid melting things, it also charges the Tavascan at more than double the speed of the three-pin socket. And it means I can use my electric garage door again.
If I had a home electricity tariff that gave me cheaper power overnight, I could program the charger through its app to only charge at the off-peak hours. But, as I only have the Tavascan for a few months, I decided it wasn’t worth switching tariffs just for that. Still, having plumbed my existing tariff details into the app, it can tell me exactly what I’m spending to charge the car – and it’s a lot less than filling up with petrol.
In April, the Easee One companion app told me I used 242.01kWh, which cost £67.20. With an average efficiency of 2.8 miles per kWh, that equates to about £0.10 a mile. A similar petrol-powered SUV– let’s say the 360PS BMW X3 M40i – has an official MPG of 31mpg. We all know that the real-world return rarely matches the official one, but let’s humour the BMW – with an April petrol price of £1.34 a litre (according to the RAC Fuel Watch), that would mean the Beemer would cost around £0.25 a mile.
That’s assuming you don’t use premium fuel (and if I had aX3 M40i, I would), which would be even more. And if I had a cheap overnight tariff for electricity, the Tavascan would have cost even less.
Sure, public charging has been considerably more expensive – around 80p per kWh – but overall, I’m quids in when it comes to costs per mile.
The whole charging thing was my major worry about living with an electric car, but it’s been far less bother than I feared. Charging at home is great – I just plug the car in when I park, and it’s usually completely full when I next use it. A full charge is for around 250 miles now that it’s got a bit warmer (the range dropped to just over 200 when it was cold, due to battery chemistry and physics, or something). Short of having a butler to take my car to the petrol station each day, I don’t know how it could be any better.
Longer trips are a little trickier, but not really in the grand scheme of things. I’ve done quite a few miles during my first few weeks with the Tavascan, but I’ve now used several public fast chargers and bar a few teething problems, it’s been straightforward. On my first trip away – an overnight at a hotel – I found out that rapid chargers often have a time limit on them to stop people hogging the power. That stymied my plan to leave it charging overnight, and meant I had to get up early to plug it in and grab a coffee, but that’s been the most challenging situation I’ve faced.
Other trips – from Sussex to exotic places like Birmingham, Leicestershire, Somerset and, er, Swindon – have just required a couple of minutes of planning to make sure there’s a fast charging station en route. And there always has been – if not a few individual chargers, then big hubs that almost guarantee a fast charge. Faffing around with various providers’ individual phone apps was annoying to start with – you often get cheaper electricity if you sign up, rather than just tap your bank card. But then I discovered Electroverse, which consolidates just about every provider through its own app and gives you an RFID card as backup. Since then, I just park, tap and charge. Giving the Tavascan a good boost of leccy takes about half an hour, which is just time for a loo break, a coffee and a cake.
So, now I’ve figured it all out, charging has been no bother. But what of the car itself? Overwhelmingly positive. It’s quick off the line in all modes, but especially in Cupra mode – enabled through a dedicated race car-style steering-wheel button – when all 335bhp is forced through all four wheels with vigour. Despite the Tavascan being something of a chonky thing, 0-62mph takes 5.5 seconds, but due to the instant torque, it feels faster. Overtakes? Motorway entry ramps? Absolutely no issues.
What’s surprised me most has been how well behaved it is through the corners. It hangs on beautifully, even in fairly tight bends, and feels much more agile than you might expect for a car well north of two tonnes. The steering is direct and communicative, and only the inconsistent braking lets it down a bit – you feel like you have to give it extra pedal push at low speeds, which takes some getting used to. However, keeping the drive mode in B rather than D ups the battery regeneration, which has the side-effect of increasing the braking effect when you lift off the accelerator. Around town, it lets you effectively drive with one pedal, but when you’re hustling a bit, it acts like engine braking and improves the general flow of driving.
It’s been great on long journeys, too. Many scoff at adaptive cruise control, but when you’re stuck in traffic on the M25, it’s brilliant. The seats are supportive and comfortable, the Sennheiser sound system is very decent, and the head-up display, which you can configure in a multitude of ways, makes it much easier to keep an eye on essential journey info.
Brakes aside, my only quibbles with the Tavascan thus far have been boring. I am, after all, using it as a family car – a job at which it broadly excels – and it’s more than spacious enough in the back for my five-year-old and her chunky car seat. The boot will swallow most of the general nonsense we need to haul around with us, but that F1 halo-like structure at the front, funky as it is, takes up a lot of space that could otherwise house storage.
A couple of cupholders are fine, and the wireless phone charger is useful, but come on – that’s cubbyhole country, and as all families on road trips know, you can’t have too many places to keep stuff. There are also no pockets in the front seatbacks, which means nowhere for my daughter to store colouring books and the like. Minor stuff, but they get irksome when you’re living with a car everyday.
Overall, though, I’m really enjoying my time with the Tavascan. So far it’s been pretty bang on for someone who, like me, wants oomph, but also has to consider family practicalities. And it’s eased me into the world of electric car ownership very smoothly.
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