If you haven’t heard of Cupra before, you’re not alone. It is an offshoot of Volkswagen’s Spanish SEAT car company, which spun off Cupra as a performance brand as Volvo did with Polestar.

The car maker is taking its electronification strategy fairly seriously, and as of the end of last week, has 3000 orders of which a 3rd is electrified in some way. 700 are for the brand new 100% electric Cupra Born, and a further 350 are for the Formentor and Leon plug-in hybrids. Buyers who aren’t quite ready for the full electric leap will be more comfortable with part-electric drivetrains.

A third of CUPRA’s orders are for our BEV or its PHEVs,” CUPRA Australia Director Ben Wilks said. “Seven hundred of these are the fully electric Born, which was released only in April. This tells us that CUPRA’s customers are all on board with our blend of dynamic design and driving, whether it comes in BEV, PHEV or ICE form.”

It signals a clear direction for buyers across the automotive sector as more electric or part electric vehicles become available. Toyota and Honda pioneered the hybrid drivetrains when driving a hybrid said more about the buyer’s green (ish) thinking than anything else. Since then, being green is the thing to be seen.

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Hybrids have the advantage of being able to travel anywhere a petrol/diesel car can, without needing to charge. Anyone who has driven an electric car has felt the anxiety of not being able to find a public charger when they need it. Although the situation is improving, those without home charging options can find public charging hard to come by.

If home charging is an option, and the buyer still isn’t ready for a pure electric vehicle, the plug-in hybrid allows owners to slow-charge the PHEV for a pure EV for of around 50km. After that runs out, the PHEV will revert to normal hybrid operation, allowing owners to roam at will.

Mr Wilks said that while the reaction to the Born has exceeded expectations, only previously short supply of CUPRA’s PHEVs had constrained sales to date.

“With 50km battery range, a Formentor or Leon VZe can be in full EV mode in daily commuting. They re-charge from a conventional socket overnight.

“Over greater distances, or where EV chargers are still seldom seen, the Leon and Formentor VZe have a proven Euro 6 turbo petrol engine for easy open road cruising. Even when the battery is run down, the VZe behaves likes a more conventional hybrid, using regenerative braking to replenish battery range.

“These are genuine – not ‘mild’ – hybrids.”

Mr. Wilk’s comment about the “mild hybrid” is a gentle dig at brands like BMW, Mercedes, and even Volvo, whose hybrid versions mainly fall into the 48v Mild Hybrid category. Mild Hybrids use a very small battery and minute electric motor to assist the ICE (internal combustion engine) and are not able to run in EV mode.

There are still doubters, pooh-poohing any kind of electrictrification, but the march continues. It accelerated after a change in federal government. The former conservative party governments spent a decade actively discouraging renewable energy and the electrification of the national vehicle fleet.

Various state subsidies remain available for electric vehicle purchases, and public charging installations have become more ubiquitous. This bodes well for the next decade of low emissions motoring. It is worth noting that most public charging uses power that is purchased from renewable energy sources.

SEAT and Cupra models are built in Spain and in the Czech Republic.

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