Vauxhall Corsa-e review

8

Britain’s market-leading small EV majors on range, equipment and value

Matt Saunders Autocar
by Matt Saunders
4 October 2021

As the electric car scene steadily grows, new brands are cropping up and coming to the fore, some grabbing market share phenomenally quickly and establishing new, alternative reputations among their evangelical followers. But some of the old ones are seizing the opportunities that zero-emissions motoring brings rather effectively too, backed by the established sales and support machinery and the customer bases that have sustained them so well for so long.

Here’s a case in point: Britain’s best-selling small electric car is now a Vauxhall. The Corsa-e is the all-electric version of the company’s sixth-generation Vauxhall Corsa, which has itself proved Britain’s best-selling car over many calendar months of 2020 and 2021.

It’s barely 18 months old as a UK showroom model, but the Corsa-e has already had £1000 lopped off its price point and an extra-value special edition added to its line-up; and you can already get smaller dealer discounts, too.
Matt Saunders
Road test editor

It stands to reason that the electrified Corsa, available across nearly 300 showrooms nationwide after all, should be pretty popular also. But it’s still no mean feat for Vauxhall to have punched such a neat hole through the resistance of established competitors like the Renault Zoe and BMW i3, to have beaten off fresher challengers such as the Mini Electric, Honda E and Mazda MX-30, and even to have scalped in-house relation the Peugeot e-208, in order to score that result.

The Corsa-e has been on sale since March 2020, having come into UK showrooms only a few months behind the conventionally powered sixth-generation Corsa supermini. By its nature, it’s a simpler and more familiar kind of EV than some of its rivals, designed and intended very much to make the switch to electric motoring easy. It isn’t a particularly quirky or different sort of EV, then – and, as we’ll explain, it doesn’t look particularly alternative, it doesn’t offer myriad, oddly titled trim levels, or come made of a host of recycled materials. You don’t buy it on subscription; you don’t own the car but lease the battery; and you needn’t join a cult to have one. This is just a small, pretty simple electric car – but, as you’ll read, it’s one that comes with a price you might just be able to stomach, a real-world range that might just suit your purposes, and very few airs or graces besides. But is it one of the best small electric cars?

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DESIGN & STYLING

1 Vauxhall Corsa e front tracking

Anyone trading in a fifth-generation Corsa for a Corsa-e couldn’t fail to notice how widely the shape of this car has changed. Shorter at the kerb but notably lower-of-roofline (by nearly 50mm), the sixth-generation Corsa is a car of smaller, less monocabby proportions than its predecessor, and also of crisper styling details.

At launch, much was made of the weight loss delivered by the new Corsa’s PSA Group (as it was at the time) Common Module Platform, which takes the lightest petrol-engined examples below a tonne on unladen kerbweight. Not-so-surprisingly, the 50kWh drive battery and heavy control electronics of the Corsa-e prevent it from coming even close to such a mark. Claimed kerbweight for the electrified version is from 1455kg; our upper-trim-level test car weighed 1514kg in running order, with 56 per cent of that mass carried by its front axle. That’s still lighter than both a Honda e and a Mazda MX-30, interestingly, but heavier than a Mini Electric.

Plumping for an EV on a smaller wheel sometimes makes for a small improvement on claimed electric range because of a reduction in rolling resistance; but Vauxhall claims the same 209 miles for all four Corsa-e trim derivatives.
Matt Saunders
Road test editor

Part of that weight can be explained by the fact that the Corsa-e has a stiffer, more widely braced body structure than a regular Corsa supermini. Because its lithium-ion battery is carried in a sideways ‘H’ arrangement under its front- and rear seats and along its transmission tunnel, it also has a centre of gravity some 57mm lower than the normal Corsa; although, as we’ve learned so many times, lowering a car’s major masses even that much doesn’t always offset the addition of half-a-tonne of ballast.

10 Vauxhall corsa e profile 0

Or, rather, batteries. The fact is, in offering 50kWh of electricity storage, the Corsa-e is one of the better-served cars in its class for electric range, rated as it is for up to 209 miles on the WLTP Combined cycle. Many of its direct rivals don’t claim more than 150-, and among electric superminis only the Renault Zoe advertises significantly more.

The Corsa-e’s front wheels are powered by a front-mounted, AC synchronous electric motor producing up to 134bhp and 192lb ft of torque, and they have their own aerodynamic spoke design to further reduce the car’s overall drag (it has a particularly low drag coefficient of 0.29, as well as reduced frontal area compared with its predecessor). The front axle is made up of MacPherson struts, and the rear- of a torsion beam and Panhard link (the latter helps to better-locate the rear wheels under cornering load).

The car comes in a choice of four trim levels, from entry-level Griffin specification, up through SE Premium and SRI Premium, to top-level Elite Premium as tested – all now getting a factory navigation system and 11kW AC charging capacity as standard. 17in alloy wheels come on all but the SE Premium; heated sports seats, a reversing camera, tinted windows and Vauxhall’s adaptive‘matrix LED’ headlights are among the equipment lures of top-level trim.

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INTERIOR

14 Vauxhall Corsa e dash

For the previous couple of generations, the Corsa was positioned as one of the supermini class’s extra-practical options, offering plenty of interior space within a slightly lofty, high-rise body. Well, no longer.

Even in the front, the Corsa-e instantly feels like a lower, tighter fit for taller drivers than its predecessors ever did, as you slide the seat back and squeeze in past the B-pillar. In the back seats there’s really only room for children and younger teenagers. The car is no more meanly accommodating as an EV than it is as a piston-engined car, it’s worth pointing out; and it is a five-door. But it certainly isn’t one of the roomier superminis on the block – and shallow footwells with close-set pedals also make it difficult for the driver even to sacrifice much front leg room in order to make extra space for someone in the back.

The best superminis have developed way beyond the compromised, long-armed and short-legged driving positions their predecessors had 25 years ago – but the Corsa’s primary ergonomics have actually gone backwards.
Richard Lane
Deputy road test editor

Vauxhall’s logic here may be that supermini owners typically prefer a car with a smaller second row but a bigger boot; but it hasn’t done the best job in providing one of those, either. In a regular Corsa, you get 309 litres of storage under the parcel shelf; in the Corsa-e, that drops to 267 litres. It’s enough to get a buggy in or to temporarily stow a child seat – just –  but there is quite a deep lip to lift items over on the way in and out, and there’s no under-floor storage either for a spare wheel (you get ‘tyre fix’ foam instead) or for the car’s charging cable.

17 Vauxhall corsa e boot 0

All versions of the car get the same Comfort-specification driver’s seat, which adjusts for cushion height as well as for reach and backrest angle, but doesn’t offer adjustable lumbar support. It’s a decently comfortable seat, and sufficiently wide to accommodate and locate bigger drivers well enough – but if you want the same-specification front passenger seat, you need Elite Premium trim.

Sitting in the front, you’re met by quite a high, bluff fascia. It’s quite a monotone ambience in an Elite Premium car owing to Vauxhall’s ‘silent black’ trim inserts, but lower-end models use lighter toned materials, and you can get red rather than chrome decoration on an SRi.

The car’s instruments are fully digital on most trim levels (the exception being SE Premium). It’s a simplified but adaptable layout, giving you a digital speedometer, an electric range indicator and a power flow meter as a bare minimum but configurable to show driver assistance or trip computer information if you want it. There’s a good-sized cowl to prevent reflections hitting the screen, and display clarity is good.

23 Vauxhall corsa e instruments 0

As regards infotainment, all Corsa-e trim levels offer a touchscreen system with wired smartphone mirroring for both Apple and Android phones. On most versions of the car, it’s a 7.0in system with menu shortcuts placed around the perimeter of the screen itself; but on the Elite Premium model, it’s a 10.0in system with a row of physical menu buttons below it in addition to the volume knob.

Usability with the latter is good thanks to the sensible provision of those shortcut buttons, as well as physical heating and ventilation controls and a physical switch, too, for the car’s lane keeping assist system. Unlike with some Stellantis group model relations, then, you don’t have to scroll through the touchscreen interface to find the control for every little thing.

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

2 Vauxhall Corsa e panning

The Vauxhall Corsa-e’s electric powertrain is the sort you can get on with easily. The car won’t set off from traffic lights like a high-end Tesla, and it doesn’t offer the more sophisticated control options of some EVs, which people on their third or fourth electric car might hope for. But it won’t unsettle or confuse either, and it serves the car well enough both in town and out of it.

While electric cars with greater power and torque can sometimes struggle to deploy it through economy tyres and only one driven axle, the Corsa-e has strong but well-balanced performance and traction. On a dry day it missed Vauxhall’s 7.6sec-to-60mph acceleration claim by a notable margin, needing 8.3sec for the trip in practice. That positions the car between an upper-level Honda E and a Mazda MX-30 for outright, off-the-line pace – a position confirmed by the car’s measured 30-70mph roll-on performance.

This is a pretty efficient and rangy small EV, but it won’t be long until you’d wish you could control its energy regen that bit more closely. Judicious coasting is key to making cars like this cover distance, and the Corsa-e doesn’t quite allow it.
Illya Verpraet
Road Tester

Like most EVs, this one pulls away in responsive, smooth and keen fashion, and keeps going in the same vein up to about 50mph, at which point its fixed gearing and ebbing torque level make it perform a little more meekly. The car is zippy around town, then; and it manages to maintain enough power around the national speed limit and on the motorway to feel assertive and comfortable at bigger speeds, but no longer particularly energetic.

You’re offered Sport and Eco driving modes in addition to the car’s default Normal one, and the latter is alleged to boost real-world battery range by up to 40%. In reality, it only does that by softening throttle calibration and capping the car’s performance, as well as by dialling down the power consumption of the ancilliary systems. It does not alter the car’s tendency to either coast or regenerate energy on a trailing throttle (it tends to do the latter lightly at lower speeds and more at faster ones); with no wheel-mounted paddle controls, the only way you can do that is by using the ‘B’ mode on the gear selector, which dials up battery regen, although typically not quite enough to allow a one-pedal driving style.

By bringing that battery regen in early as you lift off the accelerator, what that ‘B’ mode does do is improve the car’s drivability under deceleration; it simply gives the brake pedal less to do in otherwise blending up motor regen before blending in the friction brakes. In ‘D’ mode, the brake pedal can frustrate by needing a split second to make the drive motor respond and begin to slow the car down, causing the pedal to feel spongy and dead, and often making momentum harder than it need be to manage at low speeds.

As regards real-world range, the Corsa-e returned an average 3.1mpkWh at a 70mph motorway cruise, and 3.7mpkWh over the full course of our road test (the latter figure, as ever, including the influence of track testing). From a drive battery of 46kWh of usable capacity, that would make for just under 145 miles of typical UK motorway range on a charge; more like 174 miles in mixed urban and intra-urban daily use; and possibly 190 miles or more at an efficiency-optimised, 40-50mph cruise. Although it might not be enough for everyone, that’s a relatively strong showing on range for a sub-£30,000 EV.

RIDE & HANDLING

3 Vauxhall Corsa e frontcorner

Just as there’s well-chosen moderation in the way the Corsa-e performs, so too is the same present in the car’s handling. Vauxhalls have typically aimed for a more mature, secure and stable dynamic character over the years than sportier-feeling Fords or softer-set French equivalents, of course. Though it may be built on a PSA Group model platform, the Corsa-e maintains that characteristic positioning in the dynamic middleground.

Medium-paced steering (with 2.85 turns between locks) and compliant but not wallowing body control are the car’s top-level hallmarks. The chassis has a slight but perceptible sense of suppleness and isolation to it, dealing as it does with sharper edges and broken Tarmac without abruptness, and keeping road noise and vibration quite low. It certainly delivers better rolling refinement than some electric rivals; but it also handles with reasonable agility, linearity and precision, maintaining good enough body control to be nipped securely around a bend, rolling as your speed builds, but keeping stable and communicating its limits clearly.

The related Peugeot e-208 is probably a marginally more enigmatic-handling car than this, and a Mini Electric would be a lot more fun; but the Corsa-e has good dynamic versatility.
Illya Verpraet
Road Tester

The car’s grip level isn’t particularly high on its Michelin Primacy economy tyres, but the chassis and steering are well attuned to it. The Corsa-e tucks into a faster corner fairly willingly and without much initial roll. That roll builds as lateral forces rise, and as it does so a modicum of stabilising roll understeer comes along with it, obliging you to add a little extra steering angle in order to stay on your intended line if you’re hurrying along. But the electronic stability and traction control systems (which are effectively always active, although they can be dialled back at low speeds) keep a close but subtle rein on the car’s drive motor and braking systems, working to keep its path neat and tidy without intruding much.

4 Vauxhall corsa e rearcorner 0

Vertical body control isn’t quite as cleverly managed as the lateral handling. Since the Corsa-e does carry more mass than most cars of its size, it begins to heave and pitch a little on testing country roads, although not as markedly as some small EVs might. The Corsa-e’s tendency to oscillate over its torsion beam rear axle, whose tuning makes for quite an accommodating ride elsewhere, is the main sign the car will give you that it’s running out of composure over bigger long-wave lumps and bumps. It threatens to run out of travel at times, although only the very ambitious or daft would actually make it do so.

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MPG & RUNNING COSTS

1 Vauxhall Corsa e front tracking

The Corsa-e’s competitive range is a good start for it when it comes to convincing a customer that it could work as real-world transport. As we’ve already covered, it’s a car that would require attention, practice and a favourable ambient temperate in order to match Vauxhall’s 209-mile range claim for it – but, in mixed short- and longer-range use, it wouldn’t often miss that figure by too much. And that’s in a market segment in which many cars still struggle to pass 120 or 130 real-world electric miles without needing plugging in.

The car’s three to four miles per kWh energy efficiency isn’t market leading for an affordable EV, but it’s pretty typical. An 80% rapid charge at a public charging station in the car would typically cost around £15; the same from your domestic supply would cost you anything between £4 and £8 at typical 2021 UK energy prices.

Vauxhall was offering free home wallbox chargers with every car, as well as access to a special off-peak electricity tariff through British Gas and even a contribution to your bill, at the time of writing. Although the offer was shortly due to expire, something similar is likely to continue.

11 Vauxhall corsa e chargingport 0

The Corsa-e also comes with its first and second scheduled services (at one year/8000 miles and three years/16,000 miles) included in the price, and it qualifies for various purchase-price discounts schemes and offers depending on whether you’re buying online or through a dealer. Monthly personal finance prices on entry-level cars can currently be driven down below £250 over a four-year term and after a £4000 deposit. Right now, then, there seems little more that Vauxhall could do to make it appealing.

And as for reassuring: the car’s battery comes with an eight-year, 100,000-mile warranty (the wider car’s cover is for three years and 60,000 miles, and for six years against body perforation by rust), and it guards against both battery failure and degradation of usable capacity below 70% of Vauxhall’s showroom claim. That, too, is increasingly typical of electric cars.

The Corsa-e comes as standard with a Mode 3, 7.4kW seven-pin charging cable, which, plugged into a home charger of the same power rating, will take it from empty to full in less than eight hours. A three-pin ‘granny’ charging cable can be bought as an option.

 

 

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VERDICT

26 Vauxhall Corsa e static

There’s a likeable focus and pragmatism about the Vauxhall Corsa-e. It’s an EV that addresses the primary concerns that new-adopting electric car owners are likely to have when switching from a traditional combustion-engined car. Will it be cheap enough? Will it go far enough between charges? Will I get on with it?

If you buy a Corsa-e, you give yourself about the best chance possible of ultimately answering in the affirmative. That’s because this car goes further than most of its current competitors on a charge. Not as far as some might hope, admittedly, but possibly far enough (150 to 190 miles) for a predominantly short-hopping supermini. It’s one of the cheapest electric cars on the market of any size and type, offering that workable range, five doors and four passenger seats for only a couple of thousand pounds more than a Volkswagen e-Up after dealer discounts. And it’s also very easy to operate and drive, with little extra quirkiness or complication than any EV really needs, and having good performance and mostly decent drivability.

It’s regrettable that Vauxhall couldn’t have teamed all that with a more spacious interior, of course, or done more to give the driver closer control over the electric powertrain without adding top-level complexity to the driving experience. And it’s likewise a shame that the car doesn’t have a more youthful character, or a bit more fun factor.

But some of those are the kinds of qualities that generally come at extra cost, whatever the vehicle type you’re seeking them in. Considering the car’s positioning, the Corsa-e’s strengths are mostly more important, universal ones.

 

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