Cupra Raval review

The Volkswagen Group will focus its electric efforts on superminis through 2026; and the Cupra Raval is the first - and most important - of all of them

It may have had something of a meteoric rise; but, given its commercial success especially, 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, it has very much arrived.

This year, the company has built its millionth Cupra-branded car. After the launches of the Tavascan and Terramar, its year-to-date production volume for 2025 has surpassed 250,000. And it’s not just increasingly commercially successful; it’s being trusted with big strategic product development projects now, doing work on behalf of the whole group.

The Cupra Raval is the proof of that. This is the first of four new supermini-sized EVs to be launched over the next year or so, based on a new, front-motor platform called ‘MEB+’. The Volkswagen ID Polo and ID Cross, and the Skoda Epiq, make up the quartet. But, as the man on my right is explaining - Dr Werner Tietz, Executive Vice President for Research and Development for both Cupra and Seat, and someone whose impressive CV describes big executive jobs at Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche and Bentley - engineers from Cupra’s Martorell technical centre have done the ‘top hat’ chassis development for all four cars.

All four will be built in Spain - either at Martorell, or the VW Group’s Pamplona plant. The Volkswagens will still feel, and drive, like Volkswagens; the Skoda, like a Skoda. But, whether owners know it’s there or not, there’ll be more than a little bit of Cupra in all of them.

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DESIGN & STYLING

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The Raval we’re testing is a range-topping VZ model, with a 223bhp drive motor and clutch-based mechanical ‘VAQ’-style pseudo locking differential for the front wheels, as well as specially tuned, adaptively damped sport suspension. But all Ravals will get a minimum of 208bhp - as well as shorter suspension springs than their platform relations the VW ID Polo and Epiq, ‘progressive’-rate steering, special front wheel carriers, and a widened front axle. Any Raval should, therefore, feel like a swifter, keener-handling take on the modern compact EV - not only than its immediate model relations, goes the thinking, but also than its competitors.

So what, exactly, does this new platform inherit from the regular MEB one, which serves underneath the larger Born? Very little, according to Tietz.

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 Saunders
Road 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 (circa-250 miles, on the WLTP lab test, for the VZ version; as much as 280- elsewhere). This really was a clean sheet for us.”

Cupra is remaining quiet on some of the car’s technical specificities for now: things like kerbweight, and precise, final performance, range and efficiency claims. Even so, assuming the car gets as close as expected to that 280-mile upper-limit range figure, it’ll be a rare prospect among genuinely small cars.

INTERIOR

Cupra Raval concept interior

With so much disguise over both the exterior and interior, making conclusions about the Raval’s design, profile and general size is tricky. It’s a bigger-looking thing than a Renault 5 or Mini Cooper SE, clearly; and a quick nose into the back seats reveals slightly more usable space there than they have, where you wouldn’t feel too awkward asking average-height adults, or taller kids, to travel. But the car that results still looks compact on the road; although perhaps not as enticingly low and sporty as the Mini, or as sweetly shrink-wrapped as the Renault.

The Raval’s driver’s seat isn’t as low as the Mini’s, but isn’t perched up either; so the battery pack doesn’t seem like it’s right under your backside, spoiling your connection with the road. In the prototype, there’s a familiar-looking Cupra-skinned touchscreen system on the crown of the dashboard, and a smallish digital instrument screen visible through the orbit of the steering wheel. Everything else remains covered up, pending the car’s official unveiling in February 2026; but all the big ticket items - seat, primary controls, visibility - seem to be good.

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

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Our convoy of three Raval prototypes winds its way up and out of the neighbourhood of Cupra’s Martorell technical centre towards the hills. In urban traffic, the car’s top-level drivability seems to strike a good compromise between simplicity and configurability. Cupra’s usual wheel-rim-mounted button for drive mode lets you cycle between the familiar Comfort, Eco, Individual, Performance and Cupra modes - with some noticeable digital engine noise manufacturing apparent in the latter two. Throttle response feels a little overly touchy and sensitive in the sportier modes. But brake progression is always cleverly managed - without the sudden jump up in feedback and retardation that some EVs show when moving between motor regen and friction braking. 

“I didn’t want any non-linearity in the driving experience of this car,” Tietz says, when I feed back a few first impressions. “We aimed to make it consistent and predictable in every way; to respond always as you expect.” It’s the kind of approach you might have expected the Volkswagen Group to take, particularly in a class where more impish and expressive, potentially less well-rounded competitors already reside.

But does it make it fun? These mountain roads aren’t quite as useful as a circuit might have been in answering that question. The Raval VZ certainly has that dynamic maturity factor Werner’s talking about. It tackles each sweeping bend with plenty of grip and zip, unwavering lateral body control and chassis composure, and lots of traction as you feed in what feels like a gutsy amount of power. It inspires confidence with its sheer competence. The car’s mechanical vectoring front seems to lock up quite subtly under power, but stay open under braking; making the car composed as you commit it to a corner, and locked onto its line as you accelerate.

There’s lots of sophistication apparent here. An isolated, composed ride. Nicely weighted, consistent steering that doesn’t feel aggressively quick or over-assisted, and lets you guide the car instinctively. Unintrusive driver aids that don’t seem to bother you much when left on - but are also only ever one flick of a finger from accessing, via the upper edge of the infotainment screen, to switch off (apparently Cupra test driver and ex-WTCC hotshoe Jordi Gene’s one request was for a ‘bullshit button’ that would turn everything off at one press; though Tietz wasn’t able to provide it).

Could the car have been more agile, I wonder? It’s certainly got a bit more ‘big car’ feel than it really needs. Would trading a little of that outright grip, composure and handling precision for a more playful, engaging cornering posture have been worthwhile? There might be just a shade too much of the ever-composed, all-electric VW Group ‘GTI’ about the Raval; although it’s very early to say with any certainty.

MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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Cupra has been largely mute on the subject of prices for the Raval, except to say that it expects entry-level models to be available in early 2026, in continental Europe, from the equivalent of about £23,000. 

Allowing for the UK’s Electric Car Grant, it’s reasonable to expect prices to extend from there (assuming the UK takes the smaller-batteried, bottom-rung car) up to about £33,000 for a full-house, larger-battery ‘VZ Extreme’ trim car.

Our testing suggests that top-level performance model might have a real-world, 200-mile electric range; with a Dynamic or Dynamic Plus model (the versions immediately below) likely to extend that to 220- or 230 miles, although it’ll take UK testing to be sure.

VERDICT

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The Cupra Raval has the maturity and composure, and all of the mechanical ingredients necessary, to stand out among a growing crowd of small EV for those who like daily transport with a dash of sporty seasoning. And my guess is, like so many of its VW group predecessors, it won’t have many weaknesses when we get to test a fully finished example.

Cupra Raval news

New Cupra Raval hot hatch will feature 223bhp VZ variant
New Cupra Raval hot hatch will feature 223bhp VZ variant
Confirmed: Cupra UrbanRebel to be named Raval in road-going form
Confirmed: Cupra UrbanRebel to be named Raval in road-going form

This first impression showed evidence of the usual, attentively complete product positioning from the Volkswagen Group. The Raval promises to be an impressively usable small car, with space, efficiency and range to beat its rivals. Although confirmation will have to wait for now, we have little doubt that Cupra will have presented and finished its interior with its usual material flourish, too.

But will so much maturity and sophistication allow the car to make its mark in a class of cars in which character and fun factor is often allowed freer reign to dominate more prosaic considerations? Has the car got the x factor it needs to make you warm to it?

Much as it wasn’t a long basis by which to judge, forty minutes in the Montserrat mountains left us a little unsure on that one. We await a longer test to find out for sure.

Matt Saunders

Matt Saunders Autocar
Title: Road test editor

As Autocar’s chief car tester and reviewer, it’s Matt’s job to ensure the quality, objectivity, relevance and rigour of the entirety of Autocar’s reviews output, as well contributing a great many detailed road tests, group tests and drive reviews himself.

Matt has been an Autocar staffer since the autumn of 2003, and has been lucky enough to work alongside some of the magazine’s best-known writers and contributors over that time. He served as staff writer, features editor, assistant editor and digital editor, before joining the road test desk in 2011.

Since then he’s driven, measured, lap-timed, figured, and reported on cars as varied as the Bugatti Veyron, Rolls-Royce Phantom, Tesla Roadster, Ariel Hipercar, Tata Nano, McLaren Senna, Renault Twizy and Toyota Mirai. Among his wider personal highlights of the job have been covering Sebastien Loeb’s record-breaking run at Pikes Peak in 2013; doing 190mph on derestricted German autobahn in a Brabus Rocket; and driving McLaren’s legendary ‘XP5’ F1 prototype. His own car is a trusty Mazda CX-5.