Cupra’s electric future was laid bare recently when the brand unveiled the new UrbanRebel, a boldly styled all-electric supermini.
Arriving in 2025, the UrbanRebel will become Cupra's third fully electric offering, following the Cupra Born and the 2024 Cupra Tavascan SUV. It is one of three small electric vehicles built on a new platform that will be launched by Volkswagen Group, and will be joined by machines from Volkswagen and Skoda.
We spoke to Cupra design boss, Jorge Diez, to learn more about the future UrbanRebel city car and the brand’s approach to its design.
How did you approach the design of the UrbanRebel and other Cupra models?
“At Cupra they give you a blank piece of paper and say go wherever you want to go, you get a lot of freedom.
“This is exciting because with Cupra this allows us to explore more and with Seat we can reach limits that we haven’t been to before.
“When we go to the members of the board with a new design some of them might say that the design is too much, but some will say if it’s too much then it’s a Cupra.
“We are more free and I think we are really changing the culture of the company. We are pushing them to take risks, and risks should be valued.”
Manufacturers such as Nissan and Renault have all gone retro, did you ever consider doing this with the future cars like the UrbanRebel?
“For us the retro cars that some companies are doing like Fiat with the 500, we think it's a nice product because it is sentimental.
“But as we said in the presentation we don’t look to the past we look to the future, and that's why we are showing cars that will come out in three or four years' time.
“We are working on models for 2026 sometimes even on designs for 2030 because we want to try and go further and imagine what the future looks like.
“This is why we investigate and research people who are 14 year old old because these people are the future. They spend a lot of time on social media and play video games, so the question we must answer is, how do we engage with these people and get them interested in the automobile industry?
“Today we see the younger generations fail their driving test because they are used to playing on a playstation. So we created a steering wheel that is more connected with that generation because the buttons are in the same place as a games console controller and they will have similar functions.”
The interior looks very modern and unlike anything from the Volkswagen Group brand, what is the reasoning for this?
“We are focused on the driving which is why you see that all the screens are facing towards the driver.
“A lot of companies are adding a lot of screens for each person, but for us the focus is the driver, we don't believe in being democratic”.
“We want to celebrate the driver and give them their own space within the car because we love to drive.”
Will we see any innovative technology systems in the UrbanRebel?
“We have added a system called Cupra monitoring that reflects things onto the windscreen, so you can have systems like the navigation displayed on the lower part of it.
“It also helps you to drive, for example, when you want to park the system will tell you where the place to hit the curb is.”
“When we talk about gamification we don’t mean to play games inside the car. We say to use the system for communication.
“You can interact with other drivers in different places and have conversations, so there is a new world inside the car. You can have your own avatar and can personalise it by adding your picture. There is also the option to share your driving with others so we think this will help us to engage with the new generation.”
Young drivers are less interested in cars and learning to drive, how do you engage with them?
“Of course it’s true that the younger generations are more interested in their devices and having the perfect mobile phone instead of having a car.
“With all the new systems that are inside the car I think we will be able to get some of them back on board because you can record the things you do.”
“In the presentation we also mentioned the Meta Hype, our second world where you can do whatever you want, we’re even putting our cars into this metaverse.
“By doing this we think we can engage with younger generations because it gives them the opportunity to do whatever they want and have a second life.”
“The future is very exciting because we are seeing a lot of movement in technology and there is a new approach to the car industry from brands like Neo and Tesla. This gives us the opportunity to jump in a new and different way.”
Where does the car sit in the market? Is it a supermini or a small SUV?
“Our target is not to make the standard cars of today like a sedan or an SUV, we like to mix concepts because this allows you to create new cars.
“It’s a bit like a crossover but then there is a mix of SUV. When we designed the Formentor it was a mix of two animals because you have the sleep body design on the top and then the SUV on the bottom.
“Creating these new cars is leading to new architecture and platforms and that allows us to build something completely unique.”
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