Make and model: Vauxhall Astra Electric Sport Tourer Ultimate
Description: Mid-sized electric estate
Price range: £29,995 to £33,995
Summary: The updated Vauxhall Astra Electric is a comfortable, quiet and well-priced family car – and Vauxhall’s clever pricing strategy makes it the obvious choice over the petrol and hybrid alternatives.
For a broader ownership picture, see our Vauxhall Astra Electric Expert Rating, which combines media reviews, safety data, reliability, running costs and warranty cover.
The Vauxhall Astra has been around long enough that most people have a rough idea what to expect from it: a sensible, mid-sized family car that doesn’t do anything particularly wrong.
That reputation has been a double-edged sword for Vauxhall over the years – reliable but rarely exciting, which is fine until the market starts moving and you need to give people a reason to pay attention.
The freshly updated Astra gives them one, and it’s not the styling changes or the new colours, welcome as those are. It’s the pricing. Every version of the updated Astra – electric, plug-in hybrid or mild hybrid, hatchback or estate – costs the same at each trim level. Griffin starts at £29,995 regardless of what’s under the bonnet or how many doors it has. The car I drove was the top-spec Ultimate version of the electric Sports Tourer (Vauxhall-speak for estate), and it costs £34K – exactly the same as a mild hybrid hatchback version.
For a broader ownership picture, see our full Vauxhall Astra Electric Expert Rating. And for a fuller explanation of why Vauxhall’s pricing strategy is clever, see our analysis piece here.
Price and equipment
The headline pricing is one thing, but Vauxhall has gone further for electric buyers specifically. Every electric Astra comes with eight years of roadside assistance, £500 of credit towards a home charging unit or public charging account, and access to 10,000 miles of free home charging if you switch to Octopus Energy’s Intelligent Go tariff. Taken together, it’s a comprehensive package that further enhances the numbers in favour of going electric.
The Griffin models are priced at £30K and get heated front seats, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and adaptive cruise control as standard.
The mid-range GS at £31.5K adds twin ten-inch displays over the entry-level Griffin’s single screen, as well as ergonomic seats and dual-zone climate control.
At £34K, the Ultimate gets the full equipment list: advanced adaptive LED headlights, heated and ventilated front seats with massage function, a head-up display, wireless phone charging, keyless entry and a power tailgate on the estate.
Inside the car
The seats deserve a mention before anything else. Vauxhall developed them in conjunction with a German organisation that independently certifies ergonomic seating, and the result is one of the more comfortable front seats you’ll find in a car at this price. Long motorway journeys feel easy rather than merely tolerable, and there’s a massage function on the Ultimate models as well.
The steering wheel is pleasingly normal – circular, comfortable to hold, with no quirky spokes or unusual shapes. With car designers increasingly favouring theatrical steering wheel designs that look space-age but are not actually that comfortable to use, that’s more of a compliment than it might sound.
The rest of the cabin is a little less impressive. The layout is functional rather than inspiring; the materials feel a step below what you’d find in a Kia at a similar price, though maybe better than a Toyota; and the overall effect is a cabin that does the job without particularly delighting you. The dark grey tones throughout don’t help – the bolder exterior colours available on the updated Astra don’t carry through to the cabin in any meaningful way.
The infotainment system is the most significant frustration. Menus are not intuitive, the steps to reach basic functions aren’t clear, and the navigation voice speaks slowly enough to be annoying when you’re approaching a junction and need a prompt instruction. We spent a reasonable amount of time attempting to find the massage seat function and managed to disable the navigation in the process.
In fairness, plenty of other brands have equally poor systems – and most drivers will spend the majority of their time in Apple CarPlay or Android Auto rather than the native software anyway. This was a European launch event drive with the navigation pre-programmed, which meant we couldn’t use those alternatives, so the system’s limitations were more exposed than they would be in normal use.
Driving range and charging
Vauxhall claims up to 281 miles from the updated battery on the hatchback, or 276 miles on the estate. As this was a launch drive on Croatian roads rather than a longer UK test, real-world range under typical British conditions can’t be confirmed here – but the battery is large enough that daily charging shouldn’t be necessary for most households.
The car offers three levels of regenerative braking, adjustable via paddles on the steering wheel, plus a one-pedal driving mode. Switching between the Eco, Normal and Sport drive modes affects the predicted range by around 5% at each step – a useful illustration of how much difference driving style makes to real-world efficiency.
Public fast charging is supported at up to 100kW, which is reasonable for a family car at this price, though some rivals charge faster. It’s good enough for a 20-80% top-up in around half an hour.
On the road
The electric Astra is impressively quiet. After driving the DS Nº8 a few days earlier, which had a significant tyre noise problem on its optional larger wheels, the Astra’s refinement was immediately apparent. Motorway cruising is hushed and relaxed, and the car feels composed and fairly responsive through twistier sections of road.
The launch drive took place in Croatia, where the road surfaces were considerably better than most UK roads, so it’s difficult to draw firm conclusions about ride quality on the potholed and patched surfaces that British drivers deal with daily. What I can say is that on smooth roads, the ride is comfortable and well-controlled, and the standard 18-inch wheels fitted to our car didn’t introduce any harshness.
The Intelli-Lux HD headlights are a genuine highlight. On a brief night drive on dark rural roads, they were excellent – bright, adaptive, and notably good at managing the reflective glare from road signs that plagues many high-powered LED headlights now common on new cars. Worth having if you do any significant night driving.
Verdict
The updated Vauxhall Astra Electric is a genuinely good family car at a price that’s hard to argue with. The seats are among the most comfortable in the class, the electric version is impressively quiet, the headlights are excellent and the pricing strategy makes the electric model the obvious choice for most buyers rather than an expensive upgrade. At £33,995 for the top-spec electric estate, it represents real value.
The infotainment system lets it down, and the interior lacks the quality feel of the best rivals at this price. But neither of those is unusual at this level, and they don’t undermine the car’s core appeal. For a family looking for a well-priced, comfortable and practical electric car, the Astra Electric Sports Tourer is a serious option.
For a broader ownership picture, see our full Vauxhall Astra Electric Expert Rating.
