Test Car Specifications
Model: 2024 Volkswagen Tiguan e-Hybrid R-Line
Price: Tiguan from £34,060
Engine: 1.5-litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol with 85kW electric motor
Battery: 19kWh lithium-ion
Transmission: six-speed automatic, front-wheel drive
Power: 204hp
Torque: 350Nm
Emissions: TBC
Economy: TBC
Range: 62 miles (approx)
0-62mph: 8.2 seconds
Top speed: 130mph
Boot space: 490 litres
Styling
The new Tiguan’s styling doesn’t get it off to the best start. There’s been an obvious attempt to link the styling of this car and the all-electric ID.4 at the front — those slim new headlights, with the transparent backlit bar connecting them, look very similar — but the Tiguan is blockier and less sleek (in spite of an impressive 0.28Cd drag figure) than the ID.4 and that shows in the overly-chunky bumper and air intake, which just looks much less attractive than that of the outgoing Tiguan model. It’s more successful elsewhere, though, with nicely flared wheel arches breaking up the sides, and some Touareg-like styling around the brake lights. R-Line spec, with its sportier body kit, definitely helps.
Interior
Thankfully the Tiguan’s new cabin is vastly more of a success than its exterior. The level of quality and comfort is really impressive, and mark a return to VW’s form in those areas after the slightly disappointing Golf 8 and various ID electric models. The most obvious change is to the touchscreen, which now swells to 12.9 inches across as standard, or 15 inches optionally. This gets VW’s latest MIB4 software, which is a ground-up re-engineering of its infotainment system, rather than a simple update. The result is, thankfully, successful — the system’s responsiveness, clarity, simplicity, and ease of use are a massive improvement over the old system. That’s backed up by the addition of ChatGPT generative AI into VW’s new ‘IDA’ digital voice assistant. ChatGPT is there to act as a source of information and entertainment, rather than controlling the car, and it could be useful to keep back-seat boredom at bay on a longer trip, but for now it still seems rather clunky in its responses and of fairly limited use. Time — and software updates — will tell as to how effective it really is.
The same can’t be said of the little, knurled driving experience knob on the centre console, which is definitely effective. This, with its dinky integrated touchscreen, can control the stereo volume or the driving modes. Or it can control the new ‘Atmospheres’ function, which toggles between pre-sets labelled ‘Joy’ and ‘Lounge’ among others. These alter the ambient cabin lighting and colour schemes, change the climate control and stereo equaliser settings, and are basically designed to either rev you up or calm you down, according to your mood. Useful tech? Probably not if we’re honest…
Practicality
While ChatGPT and Atmospheres might be gimmicky, there's no doubting the sheer practicality of the Tiguan. Up front, thanks to the migration of the gear selector to the steering column, there's lots of storage space on the centre console, as well as two (cooled) wireless phone chargers and two USB-C outlets with high-power 45-watt outputs. There's more storage under the armrest, and useful door bins.
In the back, space is excellent with copious legroom and headroom, and split-level storage pockets on the backs of the front seats, with smaller pockets at the top for phones and earbuds. The rear seat also slides back and forth for maximum flexibility, and split-folds in 60:40 formation.
The boot is a little more variable. If you've bought a basic diesel or petrol Tiguan, then you get a whopping 652 litres of storage. If you've bought the e-Hybrid though, that drops to a useful but inescapably lesser 490 litres. Fold the back seats and there's a maximum of 1,650 litres on offer for the combustion-only models.
Performance
The new Tiguan comes with a broad spread of engines, starting with 130hp and 150hp versions of the 1.5-litre TSI mild-hybrid petrol. There’s also a 2.0-litre petrol with either 204hp or 265hp with standard 4Motion four-wheel drive. If you fancy a diesel, then there’s the familiar 2.0-litre TDI with either 150hp and front-wheel drive, or 193hp and four-wheel drive. Or you can choose from two plug-in hybrids, both based around the 1.5 TSI four-cylinder petrol engine with either 204hp or 272hp. It’s the lower-power model we’re testing here.
Both eHybrid models get new 19kWh batteries (up from 10kWh before) which gives them a potential electric range of up to 75 miles, although VW’s engineers are hedging their bets a little and talking about 62 miles as a more realistic figure. Very realistic as it turns out — our test car was indicating a range of around 27 miles on a battery charged to 39 per cent.
Performance, thanks to a kerb weight approaching 1,900kg, isn’t exactly thrilling, but the Tiguan e-Hybrid gets out of its own way well enough. The 1.5 engine can rev a bit long and high but it’s never uncomfortably loud.
Long range fuel economy is likely to work out around 45mpg, but you can top the battery up at up to 50kW from a high-speed DC public charger, or at 11kW on slower AC power, so your ability to maximise those electric miles is definitely improved. VW estimates that the 62-mile range covers around 99 per cent of an average driver’s regular journeys.
Ride & Handling
The updated MQB Evo platform basically carries over the same suspension and steering setup as before, but the Tiguan is both heavier and a little (60mm) longer than before. With that combination, you're unlikely to get a sparkling dynamic performance and so it proves. The Tiguan's steering is light but accurate, and while there's certainly some body roll in corners, it's well-controlled (especially with the optional DCC Pro adaptive dampers and their new twin-valve compression and rebound tech). The weight and bulk count against the Tiguan on a twisting road, though, so while it's possible to get that bluff nose tucked tight into an apex, there's not a huge amount of reward on offer for the driver in doing so.
You're much better off making the most of the Tiguan's comfort (the ride is well controlled, if occasionally upset by sharp intrusions) and refinement (at last, VW seems to have learned how to control the excessive tyre noise of its previous MQB platform models). Do that and, combined with the claimed 500-odd-mile range of an e-Hybrid with a full battery and a full fuel tank and the Tiguan is quite the long-haul mile muncher. Perhaps that's what gives it its best edge over the all-electric ID.4.
Value
The new Tiguan is not what you’d call cheap. In fact, the most affordable version, with the 130hp 1.5 TSI engine, will cost you £34,060. That’s considerably more than Kia will charge you for an equivalent Sportage. Prices for this plug-in hybrid haven’t been set yet — the cars we drove were pre-production models — but in this R-Line trim it’s going to be at least £40,000. Standard equipment for basic models includes 17-inch alloy wheels, the 12.9-inch infotainment screen, a 10.25-inch digital instrument display, leather wrapped steering wheel with multi-function buttons (and they are, thankfully, proper buttons and not irritating haptic pads), a rear-view camera, autonomous emergency braking, and rear parking sensors, lane change assistance and lane-keeping steering, and LED headlights.
Verdict
While we're not enamoured with the new Tiguan's styling, and it's not the most sparkling thing to drive, it does feel like a very well-rounded product. The interior marks a return to VW's old high-quality form, and the touchscreen is now a pleasure, rather than a torture, to use. It's hugely spacious and practical, and the new e-Hybrid seems to have a good mix of performance, economy, and electric mileage.
