Few could now doubt the status of Cupra as a leading Volkswagen Group brand. It looked like an experiment back in 2018; a punt, even. Now, however, in the UK Cupra has actually outsold Seat (its parent company back when Cupra was ‘just’ a performance arm rather than a brand in its own right) by some three-to-one cars so far in 2026. Basically, Cupra’s no side project for the Volkswagen Group – it’s a core brand that’s growing in appeal.
The Cupra Raval is the proof of that. It’s the first (if only by a matter of weeks) to be launched ahead of four new supermini-sized EVs that share the same front-wheel drive MEB+ platform. The Volkswagen ID Polo and ID Cross, and the Skoda Epiq, make up the quartet. But, Toni Gallego, global product marketing manager for Cupra, points out that they will all feel different. The Raval will be extra Cupra-ey not only thanks to the styling, but also due to the fact that “every version of the Raval has 10mm wider tracks than any of its platform siblings, as well as a 15mm lower ride height. Only the VW ID.Polo GTI has the same lower ride height, so the Raval will feel quite different to the others.”
Battery options start with a 37kWh LFP battery in the Cupra Raval Origin or V1, which gives a WLTP range of around 186 miles. The bigger 52kWh NMC battery is likely to be the more popular option and delivers range of between 235- and 277 miles depending on which trim and power output you go for.
The Raval we’re testing is a range-topping VZ model, with a 223bhp drive motor and electronic locking differential for the front wheels, as well as specially tuned, adaptively damped sport suspension. All Ravals will also get ‘progressive’-rate steering, special front wheel carriers, and that widened front axle that we’ve already mentioned and should, therefore, feel like a swifter, keener-handling option than those cars its doing a lot of parts-sharing with, as well as with chief competitors like the Renault 5 and Ford Puma Gen-E.
So what, exactly, does this new platform inherit from the regular MEB one, which serves underneath the larger Born? Very little, according to Dr Werner Tietz, Executive Vice President for Research and Development for both Cupra and Seat.
The Raval’s matrix LED headlights are made up of numerous small elements, with much larger triangular DRL elements around them genuinely designed to look like eyes; which open as you unlock it, and can even wink. Cutesy enough for you?Matt SaundersRoad test editor
“The motor is of a new generation; and is obviously driving the front wheels, not the rears,” he explains. “We have a new ‘one box’ electromechanical brake booster, with the ESC system integrated into it, for faster response times. We have smaller battery packs than on MEB (38- and 56kWh); which saves weight, but also allows us a significantly shorter wheelbase (2770mm vs 2600). And the new-generation motor gives us the efficiency and range we need. This really was a clean sheet for us.”
As for the styling? Well, you can see that for yourself. It’s got the unmistakable swoopy, aggressive lines that Cupra has made its own – and perhaps it’s that distinctive brand identity that has made Cupra so popular in such a short time. It’s certainly the sportier looking car next the Volkswagen and Skoda siblings, and to these eyes it looks really good. We’ll take ours in VZ trim and that very cool Manganese Green Matte paint.
And maybe its best trick is that this 4.05-metre long compact electric hatch is a similar size to the Renault 5 yet feels significantly bigger inside. Speaking of which…
Slide into the sculpted bucket seats that you get in the VZ and this does feel like a pretty grown-up car. Fancy ambient lighting beams gentle patterns onto the doors and around the light that frames the dashboard, offering varying patterns from ‘ooh, it’s like a gently lit Tiffany lamp’ through to ‘ooh, it’s like a 90s rave’. In all seriousness, lighting does a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to modern car interiors and how manufacturers make them feel special, but the Cupra’s is impressive – especially given that you get this jazzy lighting on every trim from V2 and up.
The materials all feel smart, and the bright flashes of colour and the trademark bronze highlights around the dash all make it feel very different to anything else in the class. Is it a bit fussy? Maybe. It’s very angular and there are a lot of different material textures but Cupra has made forceful design one its chief selling points, and the interior certainly matches the exterior’s assertive lines.
The Raval beams a subtle light display onto the door panels using tiny projectors in the dash. Sounds odd but it really does look cool.Vicky Parrott
It’s comfy, too. And surprisingly spacious. The electrically adjustable bucket seats on the VZ give masses of support but feel great even for longer journeys, and it’s a relief that there are straightforward, physical controls for your mirrors, windows and steering wheel adjustment.
There are still some touch-sensitive switches for climate control and volume beneath the screen, but they’re easier to use than the controversial slider controls that featured in a lot of Volkswagen Group’s bigger, MEB-based EVs. In fact, the screen and user interface is pretty good. There are shortcuts that you access by swiping down on the screen, making it easy to turn off your speed limit- and lane-keep assist, if you wish to. The big, 12.9-inch touchscreen and 10.25-inch driver’s display are clear and easy to read, and generally have quite intuitive menu readouts.
So, while a few more physical shortcut buttons would be welcome, the system in the Cupra does a good job of serving up the music, nav or system setting that you’re after, without too much muttering and prodding on the driver’s part. Naturally, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are standard on every model, and you get in-built native sat-nav on all but the rather basic entry-level Raval Origin model.
Visibility is pretty good. Slightly restricted to the rear three-quarters, but your view out is more than good enough to give you confidence in a tight spot.
There’s a good amount of space in the back seats, too. Even with the bucket seats in the VZ – which take up a bit more space than the standard seats – you can sit an average-sized adult behind a fairly tall driver and everyone’s still pretty comfortable. Especially if you’ve added the optional £580 ‘Skyline’ panoramic roof, which adds a lot of light to the rear seats. You can add that roof on any Raval other than the Origin, and it’s worth doing, we reckon. The rear windows are a bit small and it does feel a lot darker back there without the pano roof. Shame there’s no rear centre armrest, but by the standards of this class of small EV the Raval is still one of the more practical and spacious – certainly a lot more so than the Renault 5 or Alpine A290. You even get three sets of Isofix (including one on the front passenger seat).
There’s a big 441-litre boot, too, complete with variable height floor and loads of underfloor space. The boot lip is quite high, but again – by the standard of this class it’s really impressive. Only the Ford Puma Gen-E (which is slightly bigger and more SUV-ish) has a substantially bigger boot. There’s no frunk, but with a boot this big you probably won’t miss it.
The Raval will be offered with a variety of outputs from its front-mounted electric motor. Entry-level cars with the 37kWh LFP battery get 114bhp in the Origin or 133bhp in the V1, while the 52kWh V1 and V2 models get 208bhp and the top-spec VZ that we drove gets the full 223bhp. All the 52kWh models get the same 214lb ft of torque, and will be the first to be offered in the UK, with the smaller-battery Raval variants arriving later.
And d’you know what? It’s good. It’s really good. Frustratingly, we haven’t yet had the opportunity to drive any of the standard Cupra Raval variants, but the VZ that we drove on a variety of town and mountain roads in Spain is genuinely good fun, and a worthy rival to the likes of the Alpine A290 and Abarth 600e.
You can activate Cupra driving mode for maximum fun with a prod of one button on the steering wheel, or all the drive modes are toggled through via a separate button on the wheel. Vicky Parrott
Especially if you’ve toggled the drive mode through to Performance or Cupra, which brings a slightly dystopian sci-fi noise (more pronounced in Cupra) to accompany your enthusiasm, the Raval VZ feels properly engaging and playful. It eggs you on… There’s a hefty punch of power that’ll get you from 0-62mph in 6.8 seconds, but that feels like about the right amount of power for narrow country roads and will translate really well to the scruffy, awkward ones in Britain. It feels seriously peppy yet friendly, with a linear build of power and pleasantly tacticle throttle response.
Our only real quibble with the performance is that the brake feel is a touch sharp in its initial response, so it takes familiarity and some zen-like pedal control to get smooth initial brake response. After that initial bite, though, the brake pedal is short-travel and satisfyingly firm in its response, making it about as good as brake feel gets in this class, but for that sharp initial response.
A new brake regen system brings three fixed levels of regen plus a one-pedal mode that has a further two levels to choose from. You can also turn the regen off and coast freely, and there’s an adaptive mode. All of this is controlled via steering-wheel paddles for maximum ease of use and versatility. It’s a great system, too, with all the modes you could possibly want and easy control, although it can be a bit puzzling why it sometimes reverts to adaptive mode when you don’t expect it to, and some might find the sheer volume of adjustability a bit unnecessary and complex. Even so, the regen never feels grabby and offers smooth, predictable stopping power even if you choose to use it when you’re feeling fizzy on a fun road, as well as for the daily muddle through town.
This is where the Raval VZ shines. You can really feel that e-diff working to keep the nose tucked in through tight corners, and there’s a fun but manageable squirm of torque steer as you squeeze power on. You do have to push on a bit to really find the playful nature of the Raval; at a steady potter it just feels like an impressively grown-up electric hatch, with moderately firm suspension that’s nonetheless damped well enough to make it perfectly liveable. Which is ideal, really, given that this is doing to be a daily driver that you might want to have a bit of fun in occasionally, so the fact that it feels calm and composed when you want it to be is a great strength.
Mind you, we will have to try the Raval on UK roads to be sure, as the ride comfort over some speed bumps and potholes was a touch jarring on the 19-inch alloys and Bridgestone Potenza rubber of our test car – even with the adaptive dampers in Comfort mode. So this is likely to be a car that keeps you aware of its hot hatch-ness in the way that it feels quite taut, yet it doesn’t feel like it’s going to be a bone rattler, so it could hit a nice balance for UK roads.
Only the VZ gets the e-diff and adaptive dampers, but every Raval gets wider tracks than the other VW Group cars on this platform.Vicky Parrott
Certainly, on the smoother Spanish roads that we tested it on, the VZ balanced ride comfort and handling pizzazz perfectly. It’s got a really positive front end that encourages you to push and push. It'll actually cock a rear wheel around tight corners, and the steering gives a lovely sense of how much grip there is to play with. Bit of lift-off oversteer? If you really want it, yes, but you’ll have to try quite hard. The Cupra hasn’t got the sort of delicious rear-axle mobility that you might have expected from Renault Sport a few years ago, but the Cupra is a genuine riot to drive, in all the right ways. It’s a great, grippy, playful and surprisingly tactile little electric hot hatch.
But this all comes with a big caveat, because we haven’t driven the more modest Cupra Raval variants that most people will likely opt for. The VZ is pricey, while the 52kWh V2 with its 208bhp and 0-62mph time of 7.1 seconds looks like a potential sweet spot for price, WLTP range, equipment and performance, yet it does without the e-diff and adaptive dampers of the VZ, so could be a rather different experience. Our hunch is that it’ll be a pretty well-rounded compact EV if you’re after tidy handling and smart looks but aren’t so fussed about the outright handling verve of the VZ, but we just don’t know until we’ve driven it.
Certainly, in a very EV-friendly 19degC and over varied roads including motorways and mountain roads, we were impressed with the Raval VZ’s real-world efficiency of 3.8mpkWh – which is good for nearly 200 miles of real world range.
The sweet spot may well be the 52kWh V1 or V2 Raval, which cost just under £30,000 or £32,500, (give or take a few quid) respectively. These get more styling stuff, reversing camera, adaptive cruise control, the full-fat infotainment system with native nav system as well as phone mirroring, wireless phone charging, seven speakers, heated seats and steering wheel, keyless entry and all the stuff you want, really. V2 adds the very cool ambient lighting, additional style upgrades, sports seats and 19-inch wheels, so is the happy medium option for those who still want the sportier look and feel. VZ obviously goes even bigger on styling and dynamics, albeit at a price, given that you’re paying nearly £35,000 (or more, if you go for the Extreme).
It’s not confirmed yet whether the Raval will get the UK’s electric car grant, but this Martorell-built EV is very likely to qualify for the £1500 band.
Of course, it’ll all come down to monthly prices as to how competitive the Raval is against its many rivals. Those haven’t been confirmed yet as orders don’t open for until a bit later this year.
The Cupra Raval is one of the more characterful and fun small EVs, yet it’s also got the maturity and composure that you expect of a VW Group car. Lots of buyers will do big mileage in these, and as a small family hatch it ticks all the boxes with decent refinement and loads of interior space despite a compact body. Yet the VZ is also a proper rival to hot hatches like the A290 and Abarth 600e. It’s got the chops to fill both of those roles, which is impressive, and goes a long way to justifying the fairly punchy list prices that you find at the top of the Raval range.
We’ll have to drive the more modest models before we can make any judgement on the Raval as a model range, and we need a go in the fairly firmly sprung VZ on UK roads to be sure that the ride really is damped well enough for our patchy roads. But on this evidence, the Cupra Raval is the best thing to come out of this Spanish brand since the Born and Formentor. Renault/Alpine might need to start worrying.
Vicky Parrott has been a motoring journalist since 2006, when she eventually did so much work experience at Autocar that it felt obliged to give her a job.
After that, she spent seven years as a features and news writer, video presenter and road tester for Autocar, before becoming deputy road test editor for What Car? in 2013. After five years with What Car?, Vicky spent a couple of years as associate editor of DrivingElectric and then embarked on a freelance career that has seen her return to writing for Autocar and What Car? as well as for The Daily Telegraph and many others.
Vicky has been a Car of the Year juror since 2020, and the proud owner of a 1992 Mercedes-Benz 300-SL 24V since 2017. She aspires to own an Alpine A110 and a Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo.