Jonny Smith Calls VW e-Up! 'The Anti-Tesla EV'

He reviews a new VW e-Up!, argues its simplicity is actually somewhat refreshing.

There are plenty of EVs out there that are designed to shout about being electric and make you feel different compared to a conventional gas or diesel car. These are ideal for those who want an EV to make them feel more special than a normal car and those people probably won’t appreciate the honest simplicity of the Volkswagen e-Up!.

At launch, it had a small 18.7 kWh battery pack and it didn’t offer a lot of usable range, but the latest version of the electric Up! fixes that problem. It now comes with a 32.3 kWh pack that grants it a WLTP range of 260 km.

Its main advantage, though, is that it’s quite affordable by EV standards. And its sister models, the Skoda Citigo iV and SEAT Mii Electric are cheaper still and they offer the exact same powertrain.

As Jonny Smith puts it in his review of his e-Up! long term loaner (which he picked up after taking back the e-Golf he’d been driving for two years), it doesn’t feel luxurious or techy and for this reason he calls it ‘the anti-Tesla.’ In fact, with exposed metal inside and not that many features, it feels pretty spartan, but if you can get over that (and aren’t explicitly looking for a premium feeling car), then it’s definitely an EV worth considering.

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