I'm sure it's a great car, but has the small car really come on leaps and bounds since the Lupo in 1999? How much "innovation" can you cram in to a budget car? Is the Up! really going to be much better than its forebears?
IMHO it looks like a Daihatsu Sirion. Nothing wrong with that, but where's the originality?
Bet it's cheaper to make than the 8800 quid Lupo E I bought in 2000...
FWIW I still think the Panda is the only real innovative city car of the past 6-8 years...
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Thought at first read that the E-UP was some sort of Yorkshire special edition.
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Appropriate, given that the boot is just big enough for a whippet.
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I had a look at an Up! Haven't driven one, but I found the basic model quite appealing in all its well finished painted metal interior nakedness. It's also very small, only 2cm longer than a Panda. Innovative? No, not really, but very competent, especially when the 5 door one arrives.
Careful with the options list though. Add some shiny trim, better seats and other bits and bobs and you've rapidly got something costing the same as a Polo.
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Innovation in a budget car - or any affordable product - takes real ingenuity. If your product is going to sell for £80,000 you can pretty much tell your designers and engineers to do what they like; not so at this end of the market.
The bottom end of the car market these days is pretty astonishing to me. My first car was a basic Escort 1.3 3-door, bought new in 1989 for £6,600. I could have had the 1.1 for a little less but there weren't many other choices that fitted me and my budget.
That price would be the equivalent of about £15,000 today, and yet there are still new cars available for the amount I paid 22 years ago, only these are built to modern safety and emission standards, with multi-year warranties and rust protection. I think someone's been doing something clever; it can't all be globalization and cheap labour, can it?
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I think someone's been doing something clever; it can't all be globalization and cheap labour, can it?
Automation has come on in leaps and bounds. The number of people needed to make cars has fallen by a degree of magnitude in 40 years..see robotics.
CAD has enabled huge design advances.
High tensile steel has enabled lighter bodies.
Manufacturing technology - powdered metal sintering - has greatly reduced costs of components.
Electronics costs have fallen as usual year by year.
And remember the UK had a price cartel keeping prices 20% higher than normal until c 2000.
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Volkswagen E-Up! EV - Is the Up! that special? - R.P.
