Cupra EVs fast-tracked for Oz

Australia will become the worldwide proving ground for Cupra when the Volkswagen Group’s fledgling Spanish performance car brand arrives Down Under by mid-2022 with a trio of spicy small cars powered by turbo-petrol and plug-in hybrid powertrains.

As we reported in July – when we drove the VW Golf-based Leon, the Ateca small SUV and the bespoke Formentor coupe-crossover back-to-back in Spain – Cupra Australia will launch with a direct online sales model, a five-year factory warranty and a price range of about $40,000-$60,000.

Its three-model PHEV range will be the first electrified vehicles to be sold by the Volkswagen Group in Australia, which will be the first market outside Europe, the Middle East and Mexico to receive the three-year-old Cupra brand.

But Cupra could also become the first VW brand to sell pure-electric vehicles in Australia, where Skoda hopes to launch the Enyaq electric SUV in 2022, following confirmation it will fast-track the first of three all-new EVs to Australia as soon as late 2022 on the way to becoming an EV-only brand by 2030.

Cupra CEO Wayne Griffiths announced both moves at this week’s Munich motor show, where the UrbanRebel and Tavascan concept cars previewed a pair of new small electric SUVs that will arrive in 2024 and 2025 respectively, following the pioneering Cupra Born electric hatch that’s now in production in Germany.

“We have the ambition to become a fully electric brand by 2030,” said Griffiths.

“We are launching the Cupra Born this year, the Cupra Tavascan will arrive in 2024 and the Cupra UrbanRebel will challenge the conventions of the electric era with its emotional interpretation of the company’s urban electric car, due to arrive to the market in 2025.”

Separately, Cupra’s global chief said the battery-powered Born hatch could be fast-tracked to Australia by late 2022, in which case it would easily beat the Volkswagen brand’s first local EV to market here, the VW ID.4, let alone the VW ID.3 hatch on which it’s based.

“The Cupra Born will be a challenge to get that car ready [for Australia], but it’s something I am committed to doing,” Griffiths told Australian media in an online interview from Munich.

Griffiths made it clear that Australia will be an important strategic market for the Cupra brand outside Europe and that the Born will be a vital player in its long-term export plans.

“For us, Australia is more important than many other markets. Australia will be our first step going global, so we’re betting on Australia,” he said.

“We put our [efforts] on fixing the electric car for Australia as an objective and as a priority. I think the Volkswagen Group and Skoda – because they are already global and in a lot of other markets – they probably don’t give Australia the priority. But for us it will have a high priority.

“I put that in the development budget for next year that we can get this Australian-specific development for Born to be done, so it’s on the high priority.

“We’ve had to chop a lot of stuff off our list with all the restrictions and the challenges we have with semi-conductors and the impact that’s having on our business.

“But the Australia development, particularly for the electric cars, is still a priority for us that we’ll protect.

“In the past, Seat and our brand was very focused on Europe. I think with Cupra we have the opportunity of going global.”

Cupra Australia boss Ben Wilks wasn’t quite as bullish on the Born’s arrival timing, but said the local release of Cupra’s fourth model was a matter of when – not if.

“The [European] team are working at top speed to go through even some specific local testing to make sure that we’ve got the perfect offer when we launch that car,” he said.

“So if that can all come together, then we see an earlier date. We’d like [Born] to be in the market in 2023 for sure.”

The Cupra Born is based on the same rear-wheel drive MEB platform as Volkswagen’s entire ID model family as well as the Skoda Enyaq and Audi Q4 e-tron.

Like the Volkswagen ID.3, it is available in Europe with 110kW and 150kW electric motors (the latter with a 170kW e-Boost option) and three battery capacities (45, 58 and 77kWh), offering 0-100km/h acceleration as quick as 6.6 seconds and a driving range as long as 550km (WLTP).

Griffiths said he wasn’t concerned about the lack of EV sales and charging infrastructure in Australia, where the electric Rebel and Tavascan small SUVs are now expected to join the Born, Leon, Ateca and Formentor on sale in the second half of this decade, before Cupra goes all-electric from 2030.

“My organisation here is committed to … getting you the cars because without the cars, there’s no point in coming,” he said.

“We can’t just come with a Cupra Formentor. We need to have the Cupra electric cars – the Cupra Born, the Cupra Tavascan and the Cupra UrbanRebel – ready for Australia and for the future in Australia.

“I think the cars fit with what Australians are like. They’re open enough for it, for a new brand, and not fixed in the past or just with premium or luxury.

“When we launched the brand, a lot of people thought we were crazy launching a new brand in a saturated market where a lot of brands were disappearing in the middle of a disruption towards new business models, connected cars, electro-mobility. A lot of people had their doubts.”

Cupra has sold more than 100,000 cars in Germany, Spain, the UK, Italy, France, Mexico, Israel and Turkey since it was spun off the Seat brand in 2018, with the Formentor accounting for almost two-thirds of 2021 sales.

So far it has not revealed any sales targets for Australia, where the first Cupra City Garage will be established in Sydney in 2022 as part of its globalisation strategy, joining similar Cupra experience centres in Barcelona, Munich, Mexico City and Hamburg.

“Tomorrow, we will open a new City Garage in Milan, and very soon we will be in Madrid, Rotterdam, Lisbon and Berlin,” said Griffith at the Munich show.

“We are also planning to open a City Garage in Sydney in 2022. Our ambition is to become a global brand. Therefore, we will build a strong network worldwide and train more than 1200 Cupra Masters by the end of 2022.”