We're buying an e-up! Whether as a first or second car is not revealed. Sure, it's a combustion engine derived vehicle. But we find a battery capacity of 32.3 kWh interesting. It's not quite clear whether this is 'gross' or 'net', but the press release states that the identical Seat Mii has a battery capacity of over 36.8 kWh. So we assume the value above is really usable. But the expected price is far below 20,000 €, including the subsidies.

Originally we had expected a basic price of a little over 20.000 €, but now we had to assume 22.000 €. Also, for our preferred colour white 205 € has to be paid. Looking for other optional extras, at first 9 additional connection guarantees are offered. Why it is always said that an e-car is particularly economical in maintenance and repairs? We ended up with the driver assistance package for 495 €, because it included parking assistance, speed control and above all a rear view camera.

Then came the slight disappointment that one has to pay an extra 625 € for the CCS charging socket, otherwise it is not possible to connect a fast DC charger. The power cable for the socket, although cheaper, we will buy ourselves in the accessories trade if it should prove necessary. We gladly take the environmental bonus from the manufacturer in the amount of 2.380 € with us, but we had actually 3.000 € calculated. After all, you could order the winter package separately for 415 € and did not have to take the next higher equipment variant. There was the seat heating included, which is important for electric cars.

Together with the 420 € for the pickup in the Autostadt we are already threateningly close to the border of 25.000 €. How good that we have ordered the winter tyres, because on the day of pickup the weather was uncomfortable with only 2°C. We had exactly calculated the tour home. The car is listed with 260 km range and we only had 400 km to go. With our old combustion engine we achieved an average of 110 km/h, here we calculated with 100 km/h as a precaution. Half an hour or three quarters of an hour loading break after 200 km seemed to be ideal to us.

Unfortunately, things turned out a little differently. After about 130 km we still had a remaining range of about 70 km, but with this we would not have reached the targeted fast Ionity charging station. Thereby we already had reduced our speed significantly, but the average speed on the truck lane was not even 80 km/h. At least Ionity started charging quickly with about 35 kW, but beyond the 50 percent more down to 25 kW. Probably it was the winter weather that prevented the promised charging speed of 40 kW.

As we had to take into account a second charging break anyway, we did not wait until 80 percent and looked for an ionity charger 100 km away. There it was a little bit faster overall, but the promised 40 kW were not achieved here either. It is a very nice car, if one is not deceived by the low purchase price and if it is used in a limited range. Because for the pickup in Wolfsburg we needed almost 50 percent more time than expected.

The trip was not quite so cheap either, because Ionity charges € 0.79 for the kWh. The whole distance is calculated with this value, at 14 kWh/100 km 44,24 € as the result. The up! with combustion engine would certainly have remained under 5 l/100km when driving, but at present (beginning of 2020) 1.35 € for a liter of super gasoline makes just 27 €. No arguments against e-cars in general, but rather the advice not to buy this particular car if the proportion of long-distance journeys is too high. With a daily load at home, even the cost accounting looks very friendly.