If you missed Part 1, you can check my first article on my EV journey here, where I cover EVs in general, my shortlist, and my advice on testing each vehicle on your shortlist. Click back here when you’ve finished reading.
Test driving my shortlist took a few weeks. Mainly due to the Megane E-Tech being an upgraded 2025 model, with a larger portrait stereo display, taking longer to get into than the other brands. Due to insurance at the Cupra dealership, I could only have 30 mins accompanied in the Curpa Born. The Volkswagen ID.3 had a tyre puncher on the day of my test drive, but they let me test drive the car for the whole of the following day. Mini and Peugeot offered me a full hour unaccompanied, and the final test drive in the Megane E-Tech was also only 30 minutes accompanied due to the vehicle not yet being registered for the road.
It was a shame that I only had 30 minutes of diving time in two cars that I wanted the most time with. Still, I was able to have an hour afterwards playing with the infotainment system and sitting in the back seats to get a feel of comfort in each of them, but when spending so much on these cars, driving for at least an hour should be the minimum. After my test initial test drive, I wasn’t invited back for a longer test in the Megane E-Tech, and I reached out to Volvo to drive their EX30, who also failed to follow up on a test drive after not having any demo cars to drive at the time–it’s like these car dealers don’t want to sell their cars!
My Shortened Shortlist
With all five of my shortlist of EVs now tested, I shortlisted my choices further to just 3, the ID.3, Cupra Born and Megane E-Tech. The Cupra Born felt the closest transition, with a very similar feel to driving my VW Golf. The ID.3 felt a little more rolly and even with a roomier-looking interior, I wasn’t as big of a fan of the ID.3 interior over the Cupra Born. Even though the Born did have some more scratchy plastic in places, I didn’t mind where it was used. This plastic is more hard-wearing, and it was where you needed it. The Megane was also a nice car and drove, again, a little rolly. I liked its Google Automotive integration, but the vertical display screen was going to be an issue with filming my YouTube CarPlay content and the verticle nature of the screen didn’t have much support with many adapters and AI Boxes that I was able to try on it. The Cupra Born felt like it had the better handling that matched my Golf the nearest, and generally, I think it’s a better-looking car with its aggressive ‘boy racer’ curves–yes I’m still a 10-year-old!
So in summary I was leaning to the Megane at first, Cupra a very close second, and the ID.3 was a last choice—but only if the deal was too good to turn down.
Waiting for the drop
Whilst monitoring leasing comparison sites, such as LeaseLoco, with its handy price notification alerts, all three shortlisted EVs came in within or very close to my budget. The VW ID.3 was the cheapest most of the time, Cupra Born was next and the Renault Megane E-Tech had the most expensive monthly cost. However, the Megane was spec’d better than the other two at the time, and reading owners’ views in the Facebook Group, the Megane had much fewer problems reported by existing owners.
Within the time of waiting for test drives and prices to drop for the Megane, the whole line-up shifted. The thing with leasing is that sometimes car inventory needs to be moved and this is when BIG deals start to be released from brokers/dealerships. This exactly happened for the Cupra Born, with a lease deal being offered by UK Carline for a Cupra Born V3 77Kw E-Boost, for A LOT less than the current ID.3 Pro Match 59kW monthly prices!
I wasn’t ready. I was even on holiday abroad at the time. But this was a deal too good to pass up!
Seeing as the v3 Born comes with a lot more standard tech than the ID.3, including the heads-up display, and there was a 50/50 chance that the Cupra Born would be a Model 2025 edition (with a better screen, newer software and revised hardware), it felt like something I should jump on. Was I ready? No. But there was no better time than now. The Facebook Group was filling up with reports of this fleet of leases from UK Carline were coming in as MY25 editions, so I made the call and took the plunge!
My First Leased & First EV!
The mega Cupra Born V3 77kW lease deal came via an alert on Leaseloco and the broker that was running this cheapest deal was UK Carline, a few matched it afterwards, but prices have risen slightly since then. Looking back I got a great deal! I had to pay a little extra for the Glacier White option, over the ‘free’ Airfix model grey colour, plus it was one of the last two remaining options at the time of my call. It was time to make that order!
The staff at UK Carline were fantastic. They kept me informed and helped me get all the information and contracts signed pretty quickly. Alarmingly quickly! It was a little too easy if I am honest. It was like buying the latest iPhone on finance. Their one-off fee was £250 which is about average that you have to pay when leasing through a broker. Weeks after having the car delivered I still have the first initial monthly payment to come out! So at the time, it felt like a very cheap/free car!
Within around 2 weeks of first calling UK Carline I had a delivery date for my new Cupra Born V3 at the end of October 2024. It was now time to look at selling off my old VW Golf!
Swapping insurance over was a breeze. A lease comes with SEAT breakdown cover, so after removing this from my insurance, and raising the excess, I only had to pay a bit less to insure my Cupra Born E-Boost for its arrival day whilst also paying a little more to insure my Golf for another month whilst I ‘try’ to sell it privately.
Selling My Car, Privately
Selling a car privately can be a daunting task. It has always put me off over the many times I upgraded my cars. Opting for a dealership exchange felt much easier, but after saying goodbye to so much each time I did this, I felt keen to sell my car privately for the first time.
The option I tried first was to get a rough idea of dealer pricing, which is usually 1-2K below the private selling price. I scanned deals on Auto Trader of my spec, colour, age and condition. I also looked at CarWow, which only offered a base price of around £9,500, whilst a similar service, Motorway, offered an initial base of £11,500. I felt this was a drastic difference between both offerings. Both of these services involve your car going into an auction for dealers to bid on. So the price might increase (or decrease) than the base cost given to you. But with this value, I still wasn’t prepared to sell my Golf for so low.
I set up an advert on Auto Trader and Facebook Marketplace. Both were super easy. Especially on Facebook if you’re used to selling smaller items there. Auto Trader costs to advertise on their platform, but for me, this is the go-to platform for buying second-hand cars. I purchased their unlimited plan for a one-off fee of £95 to advertise indefinitely, plus this raises search results. I felt it was worth it, I just didn’t know how difficult it was going to be to sell my car.
My Golf sat on sale for the whole month on Auto Trader without any enquiries. I slowly dropped its price from the initial (hopeful) £15,995, which I thought was fair and competitive at the time of checking its competition, all the way down to £13,995. With only two weeks remaining on my month’s temporary insurance, I felt pressured to give Motorway another go and see how well it sold on auction. Unlike CarWow, I didn’t have to sell it if the car sold at Auction for a price I wasn’t prepared to sell it for.
In the end, the price it sold on auction was reasonable, after I thought about the car’s condition and the lack of interest on Auto Trader for under £14K. So I took the plunge and sold it for £10,750. Perhaps I would have sold for more privately, but with time left on my insurance, I wasn’t prepared to wait any longer and pay for another month’s insurance.
On the day of collection, they checked the condition of the vehicle and they still knocked me down to £10,600. Payments were exchanged and I waved goodbye to the little beast of a car. It was now time for someone else to enjoy. Three weeks later I saw it pop up on the dealer’s website on sale for £13,995, with a whole front splitter and rear spoiler body kit added to it, along with all the body and alloys fully refurbished. After all that work I’m still sure that the dealer still got £1.5-2K profit on that sale! Funnily enough, the buyer knew of my channel and reached out after buying it. It’s gone to a great new owner who took a chunk of extras and a reduction on the sale price, so less profit for the dealer overall–result!
But with the Golf now someone else’s enjoyment. I could now focus on enjoying the Cupra Born as being my main daily driver.
So How is EV Ownership?
I am now four months into EV ownership and I am loving it. The quietness, the instant acceleration, the easyness of charging both publicly and at home. The 77Kw battery in the Born offers me far less range anxiety than when I last drove a Fiat e500 EV for a week in Italy. I travel a few times a year to Luton and back and the Born does the 210-mile trip on a single charge with around 50-60 miles spare, or I’ve returned home with around 9-22% remaining on the battery. I am more than happy with this efficiency, especially in these colder winter months, and I’ll see how much more this grows in the summer, as warmer climates are much more favourable for the battery.
The Cupra Born offers everything my VW Golf had. The Born’s boot is 5 litres more than the Golf, yet the opening feels wider and easy to load things into. My V3 edition came with the ski-hatch, similar to my Golf, and this is a feature I use often, and I find very handy. I love the instant acceleration and Cupra mode is a joy for the boy racer deep inside. Sure I miss the exhaust note of a petrol car, but that soon wears off very quickly.
The issues I’ve had so far with the Born have been few. First is its app integration, which has improved over the months but it still needs some reliability improvements with its connection. The touch-sensitive wheel buttons still accidentally get pressed at times. Lane assist can get annoying but remembering to indicate helps overcome this issue. I don’t have any issue with the bings and bongs, they are not too aggressive or loud. I wish it had the option added for keyless entry, as it would make jumping in the car and just going so much easier.
Rear comfort has been reported as very comfortable and roomy, and in the short time I have had in the back I’d agree there. The UK spec glove box is laughably small. But it forces you to have less unnecessary ‘stuff’ locked away in there. The middle rear headrest could be removed for better visibility. Having to reselect drive mode and left mirror for auto mirror drop every time I get in the car is one of the more annoying issues; as is the deeper lip in the boot. My Golf had the boot riser, and this is an option my Born didn’t come with, so lifting heavy things out of the boot requires some care to not break my back in the process. Over time I have accepted the incorrect wiper order for the UK spec of the car. It takes an extra wipe or two at times but I soon got over this querk.
Finally charging has been mostly perfect. With the occasional missed charge due to a failure on my part by not interacting with the app or setting end times correctly. Otherwise, my integration with the Ohme charger has been superb. Its range has been spot on and it suits my needs and the distances I travel mostly, and it will only get better in the warmer summer months. In short, I am struggling to think of a better car once my lease expires in 1 year and 8 months time; especially at the monthly I am currently paying for it. Would I recommend the Cupra Born? A bit fat yes I would! The 59kWh V2 might be a sweet spot for this car. It will be lighter and more efficient, but that 77kWh battery, sure it may be heavier, but it improves the ride and gives you greater peace of mind with range.
EV Charging
So how did charging go? Well, my first public charging location, at a nearby 22kW Blink Charging lamp post, didn’t work, and driving the second local charging location resulted in a couple of petrol cars parked in the bays–welcome to EV charging woes! So I decided to try my nearest rapid charger station, an IONITY bank of fast CCS chargers. Other than the costly price of 0.75p/kW, it was a breeze to carry out and I had no problems topping my first charge of the Born back up to 80%.
In short, EV ownership requires a little bit more planning, but this is much less of a concern if you’re able to charge from home. Charging from home is like having a garage in your driveway, and if you wanted, you could always charge up to 80-100% each time and your EV could be ready to tackle 200+ miles each day, as long as your EV has a suitable battery. With today’s current off-peak energy tariffs, like Intelligent Octopus Go, charging up to 100% (which I never really did fill my Golf petrol tank to maximum) only takes a few hours or overnight, and this takes seconds to set up, much less time than pulling fuel at a petrol station, and it costs around £5-7 a time! Not the £50-60+ for a full tank at a forecourt.
Home charging is something I will cover in Part 3. I’ve collaborated with EVDance, who supplied a portable EV charger review sample and this came right after my EV was delivered. This was super handy to charge at a much cheaper rate at home, from an outdoor wall socket, and at a rate of 7p per kWh, than the 75p per kWh it cost at IONITY the day before. Charging at home will cost around £5.39 to fully charge from 0% to 100%, and the car would be ready to do up to an average of 300 miles with that. This is the bonus of EV ownership, and this is made even more special if you find yourself communicating in your new EV, daily.
My EV Journey – Part 3
So in Part 3, I will go into a little more about charging EVs, both public and at home, portable and my new 7kW type 2 home wall charger installed by Ohme and a little update about my experience in my Cupra Born.
The future is certainly electric and right now, it’s been great so far! EV prices are still crazy, yet there are some great deals out there for lease, which reduces the cost of entry, greatly. At the pace EV and battery technology have been going, leasing an EV makes it far easier to ‘upgrade’ to a better-performing EV with newer battery technology and even a different class for another 2-3 years. That’ll be a decision for me in 1yr 8 months and counting. Then, the ID.2 will be released, we will see a facelifted Megane E-Tech, and who knows what else will be available at that time. For me, that’s exciting!
If this journey has encouraged you to search and buy your first EV, please consider supporting my site and channel by:
- Signing up for LeaseLoco using my referral code.
- Sign up to an Octopus Energy tariff and we will both get a share of £100!
- Install a wall charger from Ohme (not affiliated but my experience has been great!)
- Get a portable EV charger from EVDance on Amazon
Thank you for your support!
