An EV Road Trip To Kuantan with the CUPRA Tavascan

We’ve done several electric car road trips on paddleshift.sg already. They usually involve a route that utilises most, if not all, of the NSHW stretch from after our checkpoint to Kuala Lumpur.

We drove an ID. Buzz up to KL earlier in the year. Story here!

And for good reason. This stretch of highway is far more heavily utilised than almost anywhere else in Malaysia, meaning there needs to be adequate infrastructure to support the high volume of commuters shuttling to and from KL & JB.

As such, even city-centric electric cars should have no issue tackling the 370+ kilometre trek up North, with a plethora of chargers along the general route to ensure you never run out of range. But what about Malaysia’s eastern coast?

Here, you trade fast-moving expressways, for a good mixture of B-roads and plenty of countryside scenery. You’d also be able to spot stretches of exposed sea too, making for quite the backdrop for the Tavascan.

So why would you not want to embark on a scenic drive along this bit of Malaysia?

A Smooth Start

We chose the CUPRA Tavascan because we wanted to see whether an electric CUPRA still retains the driving characteristics of its ICE predecessors. We were also curious about its road manners; EVs tend to be more relaxing to drive, with lower overall road noise and no additional drone from a combustion motor.

But more crucially, we chose the Tavascan because it should comfortably be able to cover the trek to Kuantan with no issue. CUPRA claims a range of 553 kilometres, a figure which we failed to meet, but got close to – more on that shortly.

We crossed into Malaysia via Second Link, only staying on the NSHW for less than 15 minutes before switching it for smaller highways that led us further East.

The highways themselves then vanished altogether, giving rise to some truly epic B-roads. It is on these roads that we got the answer to the first part of our question. An electric CUPRA does indeed still have the general driving characteristics of its combustion forefathers.

The Tavascan feels eager to corner, with excellent initial turn-in bite, and none of the laziness that you’d have come to expect from a large, fast electric crossover. It then settles nicely into the turn, creating a sense of never-ending traction.

And the sensation of traction is communicated very nicely through the steering rack, allowing you to precisely unwind the steering lock to apply all of the Tavascan’s 335 bhp. On power it stops impressing you with its cornering prowess and instead shows you what it can do with sheer straight-line acceleration.

But don’t be fooled into thinking that this dynamism comes at a huge range penalty. Despite our enthusiastic driving through these roads, we reached our first charge stop, at Villea Rompin Resort & Golfhalfway up to Kuantan, having consumed just 43% electricity.

But Why Villea Rompin Resort & Golf?

Well, it wasn’t like we had a whole lot of choice. Charge infrastructure here is lacking, but when you see the volume of vehicles using said roads you’d understand why. There simply isn’t even demand for charge suppliers to want to install a whole lot of chargers.

Still, the charger at said resort worked flawlessly, juicing us back up to 100% in about the same time it took for us to finish our lunch.

The Drive to Kuantan

The drive became increasingly rural. We ended up driving through kampungs, plantations and farms – chickens, goats and even ox weren’t uncommon sights. Still, the Tavascan soldiered on without us ever having to worry about range.

The only stoppage was for us to snap some cool photos of the Tavascan against a backdrop of the sands and the seas. We arrived at our hotel, Hyatt Regency Kuantan Resort, with 66% battery left. All in all, considering how spiritedly the roads encouraged us to drive, the consumption figures weren’t too shabby.

Patchy Infrastructure

Day 2 was when our woes began. For starters, the car had too high of a battery percentage to utilise the AC chargers at our hotel to slow charge overnight. Not that we’d actually have that option, because, as it turns out, the chargers were faulty.

There were chargers at a nearby carpark by the beach, but it really wasn’t an option for us as we’d incur not insignificant overnight parking chargers. The continued success of our road trip hinged on a single DC 180kW charger on the highway that’d bring us back to the western coast.

I estimated that we’d reach said charger with about 30% left, and that we’d need about seven minutes of charge time to bring the car back up to a state of charge that’d allow us to reach our next stop – which was a café at Genting Highlands.

Unfortunately for us, that charger was down too. Cue the bum squeaks.

An Unscheduled Detour

Consumption was higher than expected – we actually reached our planned charged stop with just 25% left. Which meant we only had around 100 kilometres of range left, nowhere near sufficient for us to limp the Tavascan to our next scheduled stop.

A quick search on Plugshare revealed that there was a DC40 charger at a nearby industrial estate. Not ideal, but we didn’t have any choice. The app also said this wasn’t a networked charger – i.e it wasn’t on any platform and we’d have to rely on the property owner to set up the charging for us.

We took a risk and drove the 15 kilometres to recharge, all whilst panicking at the ever-dwindling range. Thankfully it all worked out. Even though the kerfuffle ended up costing us about two hours. Once the car was at 45%, we headed back onto the highway to our next stop – Genting Highlands.

It was well past lunch by the time we reached. And as we plugged the car in to charge right by the Starbucks, we formulated a new itinerary. We’d now head to the summit of Genting Highlands, before then driving back down again and pressing on to our next hotel, which would be in Malacca.

The Tavascan soaked up all the twists, turns and bumps with ease, and handled the 100 or so highway kilometres to Malacca as well.

In fact, it then also did an entire day’s worth of exploration around Malacca on the same charge that we gave it on Genting. (A lot of the photos in this bit of the article were shot around Malacca).

The Takeaways

At the end of the third day, we plugged the car in to charge via AC overnight. With the pack now fully topped up, we could comfortably keep up with NSHW traffic on the way back down to Singapore.

So what have we learned? Well, it is possible to drive an electric car on the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia. But you’d have to follow the ABCs of EV ownership – that is to Always Be Charging. The hassle we met at the start of the second day could have very easily been avoided IF we spent an extra 15 minutes charging at another DC30 charger beside our resort.

That’d have given us the buffer 80 – 100 kilometres that we’d have needed to get to Genting. But you’d really only be able to drive on a similar route should you have an EV that would realistically cover more than 400 kilometres in the real world on a single charge.

This trip has also shown just how impressive VAG EVs have become. The highest ever range estimate that we saw on the cluster was 503 kilometres, which is an impressive 90% of its homologated range. And this was after the car was fully charged following half a day’s worth of B-road driving.

The Tavascan was also a thoroughly competent road trip machine. It had all the space in the world for our luggage, all the comfort and mod cons on the inside that made long drives comfortable, but with the power and handling prowess that allowed us to drive spiritedly when we needed or wanted to.

It is proof that going electric doesn’t mean giving up on driving enjoyment. Sure, you lose the noise and vibrations, but you then gain sheer instantaneous acceleration and traction that you can really only get in an electric car!