It's electric! ID3 Pickup.

[monkeyhanger]

IMHO the Cupra Born looks so much better to my eyes than the rather gawky looking ID.3.

It looks as if Cupra have also refrained from using cheap looking glossy piano black trim on the interior - I could never understand why VW used such an impractical (scratch and swirl, fingerprint and dust magnet) material for the ID.3 interior door pulls .

In truth, the interior looks sportier with the one piece seat backs, but the materials used are no more premium, same door card material, just the same amounts of cloth panels on those front door cards. They've been a bit sly in cheaping out on the rear door cards, but the ID3's rears are the same as the fronts (why do they cheapen the rear door cards for the sake of no adding a 50p swatch of trim cloth? Must save all of £1 per car - even if they added £20 to the list price, i;d pay it! Other little bits like door pocket linings missing on the Cupra too, the little bits that they don't think you'll notice

I think all the improvements are in the sportier seats, the proper centre console/armrest (rather than the flipdown airline style armrests of the ID3  - hate those, never used them), and the dash is differently styled but no better or worse - when you tot all that up, it doesn't seem like they've spent any more money on the Born's interior, it just looks more hot hatch. For me the main draws were the exterior improvements and the sports seats. On the ID3, I got some shell coverings in matt carbon for the black gloss door grabs and centre console cap - so the black gloss fingerprint considerations haven't been an issue - i've got to get them off before collection by the buyer though.

There are a few odd things - on the dash there's a light grey cloth surround to the drivers instrumentation screen, it looks like an oversized neck roll from certain angles.

I have already tested a local demo of the 230ps V2 Born (Pulman Sunderland have a Silver one). They've not improved the suspension or driving dynamics, the marginal improvements in the V2 over mine are by virtue of the 19" wheels with Conti Eco Contact 6 tyres vs mine on 18" wheels with Flintstones (I also drove a V1 on 18" wheels with Bridgestones as a direct comparison to mine, and it was exactly the same in handling). As you might expect, going up from 204ps to 230ps isn't a massive difference in performance, it was like taking a manual car to 50mph and putting your foot down in either 4th or 5th - noticeable but not huge.

To be honest, my main reason for the upgrade was in the crazy used prices of the ID3 making it cost me £4k to change my ID3 Life to the Born which has a current RRP of just £2k more for the Born - it's sold through Motorway for £7k more than I paid for it 13 months ago. In man maths the Born is only costing £2k more to change because its got a £2k higher list price.

My wife decided today that if i'm upgrading then so is she, so I found her the same car, but in the signature "Aurora blue" colour. Her ID3 has done even better, that's going for £10k more than the price we paid for it a year ago on Motorway, because her Family trim only cost me £800 more than my Life (RRP was £2500 higher, but it had a bigger discount at the time). Pick up on that one is probably a few weeks away.

These 230ps units intended for Demos are like rocking horse sh!te, and the factory fresh orders are a minimum of 30 weeks away while ID3 orders are a ridiculous 14 months right now, and only for the Life, the only car in the range that doesn't have Matrix lights - VAG don't seem to be able to get hold of them right now for VW, Audi or Skoda, and no Born variants have them.

[monkeyhanger]

Like the look of that.

Have you sat in a Born, and how does it compare to the ID3?

The sports seats are as comfy as the ID3, its just a skin change really, the 2 cars drive exactly the same like for like (output/wheel size). The larger screen (12" vs 10" on the ID3) is a little better, and the HUD that's standard on the V2 and V3 Born trim is great. The centre console is bigger and surrounds you more, so feels a little less roomy than teh ID3, but practically it isn't, and there's no less legroom behind, so no compromises in practicality. It just felt very familiar, like someone had taken my ID3 and done a bit of retro fitting for new trim pieces and added Sports seats.

[monkeyhanger]

Congrats MH! 
What was it you said about the Born previously? 
Love the look of them myself, spoke to a couple of dealers to price up an e-boost as my fuel bill is pushing toward £300 a month some months now but can’t face selling the GTI so it stays.
Will be keen to read more on what you think of it.

I thought the Born was an ID3 with a Halfords makeover, and I still agree with that, but the Copper accents aren't offensive in the flesh as I thought they might be. Also, as the Cupra has access to the 230ps unit (the ID3 doesn't), it feels less of a sheep in wolfs clothing than the 204ps unit that both the ID3 and Born have access to.

I felt that the ID3 was more of an "honest" car in that respect, some people did expect the Born to be massively different in the handling stakes - but it isn't. The ID3 handles very well  compared to what I would imagine a Golf GTI with 18 bags of cement on board would feel like. They've done a good job in dealing with that extra weight for both cars, but the handling feels more Audi A4 Avant than Golf GTI if you try to chuck them about. I don't think you can get away from that until battery tech changes radically with double the energy density and half the weight.

The instant response of the electric drivetrain in either car is just brilliant, but obviously there's faster EVs out there (at a minimum £55k+spend, Teslas and Polestars with decent outputs are now hideously expensive due to recent price rises). The cost of cars recently is no less daft than the rises we've seen in almost anything else you can buy.

My fuel bills are excellent - costing me 1.25p a mile to run it in the Summer, my tyre wear costs more than the fuelling.

I had a bit of good fortune on that front - last May I had a year's fix for 15p per kWh and 5p per kWh for my 4 hours window of cheap overnight charging, with 23p a day standing charge. I should've been moving up to 35p per kWh and 7.5p overnight rate with 48p standing charge, but I got an apologetic email from Octopus to say they should have given me 6 weeks notice my rate was shooting up, so they decided to let me keep my original rate to May 2023! Otherwise it would've been more like 2p per mile, still no hardship vs the pumps.

The last 2 months have been a bit of a rollercoaster for me. I am woefully underpaid in my current job, but love working from home so i'm not paying out a fortune in doggy day care and breakfast clubs for the kids.

I got a job for a £20k pay rise and generous company car allowance at the end of March, put my notice in, interviewed and appointed my successor, and then the company I was going to went bust! So over the last month i've been interviewing hard to secure another job, and last Wednesday I landed an even better job than the one I should've gone to (remote working and £30k more than i'm currently on, but no company car). That's when I decided to go with the Born and grab one of those briefly available stock Borns.

If anyone is after a born and doesn't want to wait a year for it I would get on with it now and grab one of these "demo" intended cars coming through as unallocated stock before they're gone. Autotrader is a good place to start seeing availability, but also try rining the bigger groups of dealerships like Listers, Heritage, Lookers, to see if they have anything available. You will not get a penny piece off list price, the dealers can sell these cars in days, and they know it. There's no deposit contributions either. Chances are though, whatever you're driving right now has given you a ridiculous amount of equity, so it shouldn't hurt too much not to get the 15%+ levels of discount we've historically been used to.

[phope]

Interesting - like you, I am changing jobs next month for a decent uplift and the job comes with a company car & no option to have a cash allowance unfortunately.

Keen to minimise the tax bill as far as I can by going EV and the ID3 always seemed a bit dreary to me....will see if the Born is available to pick from

[evo1986]

Interesting - like you, I am changing jobs next month for a decent uplift and the job comes with a company car & no option to have a cash allowance unfortunately.

Keen to minimise the tax bill as far as I can by going EV and the ID3 always seemed a bit dreary to me....will see if the Born is available to pick from

Get in touch and I’ll see if I can help….

Usually retailer allocated demo cars are only available to purchase and not available on lease agreements

[phope]

will do - the new employer is being a bit slow in coming forward with details of how they operate a car scheme, suppliers, etc

[Exonian]

Lots of useful & interesting info

Lots of interesting stuff there MH in those replies.

I’d seen mentioned before on the dedicated Born message boards that these cars landing at dealers were supposed to be demos but the three dealers I spoke to all had a good number of cars rather than an odd demo or two, some seemed to have nearly a dozen at their disposal they were either in the UK now or imminent. There was a strong rumour before launch that there was going to be a consignment available in a take it or leave it spec in March but these didn’t materialise and instead they allowed UK buyers on the mailing list (self included) chance to order 204PS models for approx a week at a March only price then jacked the list price up circa £2k on 1st April. These cars arriving at dealers now seem to be that consignment, just delayed.

Unfortunately instead of having a £30k payrise (I’d be queuing for an RS3 if I did!) I’m around £6k worse off now then last year and in real terms lots more than that but at least I get to work less hours.
In fact in my neck of the woods you’d do quite well go get a £30k job never mind one with a £30k payrise, and that’s in an area where you’d pay £300k for a rabbit hutch starter home. So good going there MH on the new job, maybe I need to up sticks! 
For a V2 e-Boost Born like yours they wanted an extra £4K on the deposit to keep the monthlies anywhere near what I pay now on my Clubsport.
£4K plus the cost of a wall box pays for a lot of Momentum (I’ve just burned through a tank in five days even stretching it to over 38mpg lately due to warmer weather  ) so that’s a high price just to be rid of DSG and indeed any cog gearbox! 😁

By chance I was actually passing my nearest Cupra dealer today, Dales (80 plus miles away from home) and thanks to your posts I very nearly dropped in to have a look at a Born in the flesh. I decided I’d be sensible and keep any temptation out of the way so sailed on by.

£4K saved is £4K nearer retirement in my book. All I want to do these days is retire down by the sea.

But I’m still fascinated to hear how you get on with the Born, plus I’m keen to look at the Megane E-tech as these things are right up my street. If I had a company car allowance I’d be in an EV yesterday.

[monkeyhanger]

Lots of useful & interesting info

Lots of interesting stuff there MH in those replies.

I’d seen mentioned before on the dedicated Born message boards that these cars landing at dealers were supposed to be demos but the three dealers I spoke to all had a good number of cars rather than an odd demo or two, some seemed to have nearly a dozen at their disposal they were either in the UK now or imminent. There was a strong rumour before launch that there was going to be a consignment available in a take it or leave it spec in March but these didn’t materialise and instead they allowed UK buyers on the mailing list (self included) chance to order 204PS models for approx a week at a March only price then jacked the list price up circa £2k on 1st April. These cars arriving at dealers now seem to be that consignment, just delayed.

Unfortunately instead of having a £30k payrise (I’d be queuing for an RS3 if I did!) I’m around £6k worse off now then last year and in real terms lots more than that but at least I get to work less hours.
In fact in my neck of the woods you’d do quite well go get a £30k job never mind one with a £30k payrise, and that’s in an area where you’d pay £300k for a rabbit hutch starter home. So good going there MH on the new job, maybe I need to up sticks! 
For a V2 e-Boost Born like yours they wanted an extra £4K on the deposit to keep the monthlies anywhere near what I pay now on my Clubsport.
£4K plus the cost of a wall box pays for a lot of Momentum (I’ve just burned through a tank in five days even stretching it to over 38mpg lately due to warmer weather  ) so that’s a high price just to be rid of DSG and indeed any cog gearbox! 😁

By chance I was actually passing my nearest Cupra dealer today, Dales (80 plus miles away from home) and thanks to your posts I very nearly dropped in to have a look at a Born in the flesh. I decided I’d be sensible and keep any temptation out of the way so sailed on by.

£4K saved is £4K nearer retirement in my book. All I want to do these days is retire down by the sea.

But I’m still fascinated to hear how you get on with the Born, plus I’m keen to look at the Megane E-tech as these things are right up my street. If I had a company car allowance I’d be in an EV yesterday.

The RS3 route had crossed my mind, but these days i'm thinking that a hyper hatch like that may be less fun than a Golf GTI because you'll only be accelerating half the time before you're into license losing territory. Not only that, but funding 2 decent cars in the household, rather than blowing it all on something truly amazing and having a little crapbox in reserve (the only way I could justify spending so much on one car) gets quite expensive.

£30k sounds like a big increase, but in reality it is a dramatic increase - i'm on £35k currently, which is a woeful wage for what I do, but given I could work remotely and avoid paying for the kids to be in school breakfast club and the hound into doggy daycare, i'd have to be earning £10k more just to cover those expenses in my take-home pay. The new job is working remotely from Milton Keynes, so I suppose they're paying London money!

Yes, the house price differences are mad, our house has doubled in price in the last 9 years due to a lot of Southerners cashing in their overpriced houses and moving up to our coast, driving up prices.

Picking up the Born tomorrow at about 11am, but won't be back until silly o'clock following meeting the new team in person in Milton Keynes at 2pm, probably staying 1-2 hours and driving all the way back to North Tyneside. I am off on Thursday to get the car properly washed, treated with Iron X and then sealed with 2 coats of G-Techniq C2V3 (the closest I get to a proper detail). I will get some extensve photos out then.

If anyone is thinking of getting a Born soon, especially the 230ps variant, now is the time to try and secure one. The ID3 orders already in are running at 14+ months and were presumably pushed back to allow this launch tranche of Borns to get through before new orders find their place in the proper long queue with the ID3s, ID4s, Q4s and Enyaqs.

With my sensible head on, i'd probably avoid the Megane - these ridiculously expensive cars they've now become (remember when we were all  moaning how expensive a £25k RRP MK7 GTD with some room for discount was only 9 years ago?  ) are only paletable with decent residuals, and Nissan/Renault residuals are generally crap, with the likes of the Nissan Leaf havng far worse residuals than the ID3.

The ID3 residuals are decent, both current actual and the ones VWFS anticipated in their calculated GFVs. The Cupra GFVs are a bit better than those even, as it seems that VAG are trying to establish the new order of prestige as: Audi>Cupra>VW>Seat>Skoda. Whether that reflects in real residuals remains to be seen, a lot of people will still see Cupra as Seat, despite the separation. However, if the 230ps variant doesn't make it to the ID3 and remains a relative rarity, i'd expect it to have noticeably better residuals than the ID3 204ps and Born 204ps variants.

[Exonian]

Good luck with the pick-up (and new job) MH.
You must be well practiced with long distance EV driving now.
I’m looking forward to hearing more on the Born once you’re familiarised with it (not that too much is different)
I happened to be following an ID.3 this morning and I do like how the brake lights are an X.
Aside from that and the fact the dealer network is even more far flung than public chargers in my primitive corner of the Earth I do prefer the Born on almost every aspect.

The E-Tech interests me in that it’s a real looker and the battery tech seems a bit more advanced on the face of it. Technology is galloping along quickly.

[monkeyhanger]

What a long day! Out of the door at 4:30am, drove from Newcastle to Hounslow, London to drop the ID3 off (needed a top up charge just before Peterborough), Got there at 10am, got a lift to Twickenham to pick up the Born, away to Milton Keynes with 45 mins to spare to charge it back up to 95%. Met my new colleagues for 2 hours, and then Drove back up to Newcastle, with a stop at the Moto around York on the A1 and missed the last free charger by about 20 seconds and someone was just reversing into the space. Had to wait 25 mins for one to free up and then a 25 min charge to get me back to Newcastle with a safe margin of charge (20%).

Had a few boy racers gawping at the Born as they drove past me on the A1, probably wondering what the hell it was, and some bell end in an old S3 (2011, 265ps variant) was tailgating me, then moving out a lane, hoofing it into the high 90s, and then i'd pass him a mile later, having maintained a constant 75mph while he's dropped to 60mph up the road - this happened 3 times before he gave up.

Considering i've been sat in an ID3 for 5 hours, and a Born for almost 6 hours, my back is fine - so the seats are incredibly supportive and comfy. I think i've found my way around the infotainment system - completely different function layout.

Unfortunately, both the "Performance" function *equivalent to ID3s "Sport" mode and the "Cupra" mode that enables the E-boost act like they are in B mode, even when they are in D mode, with regen I didn't ask for when I lift off to maintain a slightly slower speed. Mildly annoying - i'll have to adjust my driving style to maintain access to the full 230ps, but I find that coasting when you lift off (as D mode should work, and does in the other normal modes) makes for smoother driving than the regen kicking in when you lift off (as B mode works in the normal modes) - it's like driving an older car, having accidentally left the manual handbrake on.

The slightly snugger interior has really grown on me, apart from that "neck pillow" on the dash that surrounds the drivers information screen - if there's one thing that might look tatty before its time, it'll be that.

Thoroughly glad I changed cars. 26C outside, sticking with 75mph, the car did 3.9 miles per kWh home, pretty good going.

Handling feels a bit sharper, but I think that's all in the 19" rubber, because the V1 demo on 18" wheels and Bridgestone tyres didn't feel any better than my ID3 on the same - there's nothing in the specs to suggest that V2 gets uprated suspension vs V1.

Got absolutely nothing from the dealer, not even a dealership keyring or a lightning/USB-C lead. There's no pump or gunk bottle with the Born V2, but maybe the Conti 6s have self sealing tyres, so they don't include them? I think that was the case with the ID3 with optioned larger wheels. It was a relief after 6 VWs in a row coming on sh!tty Bridgestones to finally get a set of decent shoes for the car! 

The HUD is excellent, the sat nav is incredibly buggy. On stretches of road the verbal instructions announce leaving a roundabout that not only isn't there, but was never there The verbal instructions do seem to be taking about the right general location though. The visual instructions on the dash state the correct place, showing no roundabout and a correct distance to the next change of instructions - next turn off etc. It happened about 10 times over the day - I don't remember my ID3's being that bad, how is it on the MK8 Golf?

I have today off, so looking to get off the hundreds of squished bugs from the front, wash, Iron X, and 2 coats of G-Techniq C2V3.

The down side of long distance EV travel is when you stop at services only to find all the chargers full - I missed jumpng on the last available one - someone was backing into the space, so waited 20 mins for one to free up before a 25 min charge to get me from 19% to 60%, giving me plenty of juice to get back up from York A1 services to Newcastle.EV ownership has more than doubled in the last year, but the number of chargers at the service stations seem to have not really increased in line with that.