Cupra Tavascan Proves Electric SUVs Can Be Crazy

Teslas may be a lot of things – they're even decent to look at – but stylistically, they don't move the needle much. But Musk and company, suffice it to say, aren't the only ones working on electric vehicles, and imbuing them with more emotional designs.

Just look at theCupra Tavascan. It's a concept from Volkswagen subsidiary Seat's new performance sub-brand. And though it may not be to everyone's liking, it is undeniably dripping with more aggressive design than anything Tesla has made. And for that reason alone, we're glad the Spaniards brought it to Frankfurt.

Named for a town on the Spanish-French border, the Tavascan concept is based on the same MEB architecture as the newVolkswagen ID.3, and a whole raft of electric vehicles to follow from the German giant and its many divisions.

As a show car, you'd figure Seat might have given it some headline-grabbing power figures. But despite appearances, it instead stuck with a sensible pair of electric motors to give it 302 horsepower, a 6.5-second 0-62 mph time, and a 280-mile estimated range. Hardly enough to give theTesla Model X(or even theModel Y) anything to worry about, but we gather that's not the point.

The point of the Cupra Tavascan is to show where VW's latest performance brand is heading next, and to demonstrate the flexibility and scope of its broad-ranging electric-vehicle initiative. And on that front, we'd say it succeeds. The question, of course, is whether Seat will build it or something like it, but that question is largely academic as far as we're concerned, because even if it were put into production, we wouldn't be seeing it on American roads anyway. So we'll just appreciate the aggression with which Seat has styled this concept and leave it at that.