Cupra Born hatchback - Reliability & safety

The Volkswagen Group has invested millions of pounds in its all-new electric architecture and the Cupra Born benefits from this extensive development and testing. Build quality and reliability are an important part of the manufacturing giant’s effort to steer people away from combustion-engined models.

If there are gremlins early on, they're most likely to be software related, as so many of the car's systems are electronic. The ID.3 suffered from lots of tech bugs not long after its launch, but we’re hoping that all of those have been fixed by now.

Cupra Born reliability

The Cupra brand came 18th out of 32 manufacturers in our latest Driver Power owner satisfaction results, with a middling 23.1% of respondents reporting a fault within the first 12 months. Customers were most pleased with performance and exterior design (where Cupra came third), along with strong results for interiors. Lower scores were given for ride comfort and practicality, while Cupra came last for the user-friendliness of its controls.

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Safety

Lots of safety equipment is available for the Born, including features like predictive cruise control and even semi-autonomous driving that can assist with steering, accelerating and slowing the car in heavy traffic on the motorway to make long trips more relaxing. The Cupra can also be fitted with a 360-degree camera view to make it easier to park, along with sensors to detect other traffic and help prevent collisions. More recently, augmented-reality was also introduced into its head-up display, providing instructions and warnings ahead of the driver.

With all of this modern safety equipment, it's unsurprising that the Cupra gains the same five-star Euro NCAP safety rating as the Volkswagen ID.3, Polestar 2 and Skoda Enyaq iV. The Cupra Leon and Formentor both have five-star scores too.