Cupra Born
58kwh V3 150kw
Mileage 6353 List price £40,150 Target Price £40,150
Price as tested £38,390
Test range 215 miles
I’VE GOT A guilty secret: I used to rather enjoy the ‘tyres, oil, lights, fluids’ ritual. You know, the routine car maintenance checks we’re encouraged to do regularly to make sure everything is topped up and tip-top under the bonnet.
Now, though, there are dashboard lights to alert us to low tyre pressures, oil sensors in place of messy old dipsticks, and longlasting LED headlights that mean bulb failures are rare. Oh, and what with not having an engine, electric cars don’t even have engine oil to keep an eye on.
So, what’s left for me to do on a Sunday afternoon to make sure my Cupra Born is fit for the Monday morning commute?
Well, there’s still some interest under its wee bonnet, along with a couple of symbols depicting lightning and a book – which
I take to mean ‘danger of electrocution if you fiddle with things you don’t understand’.
To the right of the electric motor is an excellently designed windscreen wiper fluid top-up point. There’s a persistent warning light on the driver display to tell you when the fluid level is low, and when it is, refilling is simple. The easily accessible bright blue cap flips up on a hinge (so it won’t slip through your fingers and roll under the car), revealing an opening wide enough to avoid spills. There’s also a golf ball-sized top reservoir, so you’re given fair warning when the main reservoir below it is full when topping up.
On the other side of the ‘engine compartment’ you’ll find the coolant and brake fluid filler caps and tanks, which have traditional level indicators. I haven’t had to top up either in more than 6000 miles with the Born.
And, other than giving the radar sensors on the front and rear bumpers a wipe to make sure the car continues to ‘see’ what’s going on around it, that’s about it. If I really want to get my hands dirty, I can do a tyre pressure check in the old-fashioned way, although again the wheels are monitored by sensors, so the driver display should flag up if any of them are low.
Who said life was getting more complicated?
‘ If I want to get my hands dirty, I can check the tyres the old-fashioned way’