Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric long-term test: report 2

The car Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric Ultimate | Run by Claire Evans, consumer editor

Why it's here To see if Vauxhall’s family-sized estate is a good alternative to the similar Peugeot e-308 and German estate rivals. 

Needs to Enable me to rack up the miles in comfort, and be as practical and easy to live with as a petrol alternative

Mileage 5791 List price £45,460 Target Price £45,460 Price as tested £46,160 Official range 256 miles Test range 155 miles

27 January 2025 – Where there's muck...

I’ve recently discovered that the shape of a car’s rear end plays a big role in how much dirt it attracts in wet, wintry weather. Being fairly low down and vertical, the Astra Sports Tourer Electric's back end is a veritable muck magnet. 

In fact, it gets covered in road grime so quickly that I have to use the rear screen washer frequently on my daily commute, and I’m cleaning the car weekly to ensure the rear end and numberplate don’t become obliterated by grime. 

This was far less of a problem on my previous cars: the Tesla Model 3, which has swoopier styling, and Volvo XC40, which, although boxy, sits higher on the road. 

The good news is that my car’s Ultimate spec provides two ways of opening the tailgate without me having to touch the car: I can use the keyfob or waggle my foot under the rear bumper. 

I’ve been putting the car into Eco mode on my regular commute to try to improve the fairly abysmal range I’ve been getting in Normal mode. In Normal mode, my round trip uses up almost twice the range it should: the 90-mile round trip uses 165-175 miles of range depending on the traffic and speed I’m doing on the motorway.

Switching to Eco mode has helped a bit, but it’s only upped the range loss to 140-150 miles. This still means I need to charge the car up every night at home to ensure I can complete the commute the following day. 

The range for short urban drives is still very poor, though, with the Astra using at least 50 miles of range to do less than 25 miles. 

The Astra has just celebrated its first birthday, too, and that means it’s due for a check up at my local Vauxhall dealer. One foible I’ve asked to be investigated at this service is the fact that the infotainment screen and dashboard display can’t agree which way I should go at times when I’m navigating using Apple CarPlay. 

While both screens show the same direction when I’m approaching junctions, as I head towards a roundabout the infotainment screen says go left, the dash screen says go right. I’ve learnt to ignore the dash’s directions, but it’s still confusing if I’m trying to use the sat nav to negotiate an unfamiliar town.  

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