Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric Review 2025

Amid the hords of electric SUVs, battery powered estates such as the Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric look like an anomaly. There aren't many electric wagons currently available at all, so one that's relatively affordable is even rarer. But is it any good? Find out in our full Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric review. 

You can count the number of electric estate cars currently available on one hand, especially since the MG 5 EV was quietly retired and indirectly replaced by the MG S5 EV — the newer model inevitably being an SUV. 

If you're looking at an EV in the £30,000 to £40,000 area, you'll have no shortage of SUV-shaped options. But if you prefer a wagon? One of your few choices is the Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric. Coming from the massive Stellantis group of brands, there is inevitably a related version of it in the form of the Peugeot E-308 SW. 

Other choices are few and far between, with the much pricier Volkswagen ID.7 Tourer being one alternative and the low-slung (for an SUV) Kia Niro Electric as another.

Originally a little too pricey for its own good, the Astra Sports Tourer Electric has gradually become cheaper since its launch and is now that little bit more tempting with a further £1500 lopped off by the government's Electric Car Grant (ECG).

It's a whole lot more stylish than the kind of models Vauxhall was selling only recently, including the previous-generation Astra Sports Tourer — it was super-bland, so you may have you already forgotten all about it. This time around it's arguably the most handsome car the brand sells, which is a shame this aesthetically pleasing experience doesn't extend to the interior, which is drab. 

Another disappointment is its driving range, which even at warmer times of year won't be much more than 200 miles in the real world. And when it's colder, well, you might be stopping at expensive public chargers a lot more often than you'd like. The problem is that the Astra Sports Tourer uses a 50.8kWh net capacity battery, which is small compared with many EVs. As it stands there's no option for a bigger pack.

Performance isn't nothing to write home about either, with the Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric using a 156PS motor. It should offer more than enough shove for most and it's certainly more pleasant extracting all of that power than it is thrashing one of the three-cylinder petrol versions of the car around just to make decent progress. 

So far, so underwhelming and we haven't mentioned the weirdly stiff ride, which hampers comfort. It also doesn't have that big a boot, with the packaging of the battery leading to a sizeable drop in capacity compared with petrol-powered Astra Sports Tourers. 

Helping the Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric claw back some ground, each one leaves the factory with plenty of equipment, with the mid-range GS trim striking a good balance between price and standard equipment. The configurator is also pleasingly lacking a vast array of expensive options to further inflate the price, as you get with some manufacturers. 

Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric: Range and charging

According to the WLTP Combined cycle, the Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric can travel 252-255 miles on a full charge depending on the trim level. We averaged around 4.0mi/kWh, which gives a real-world range of more like 200 miles. Given that an estate car is the sort of thing you might be loading up with cargo and taking on the odd longer journey, only 200 miles of range could prove frustrating. 

To make matters worse, the range estimation isn't very accurate and doesn't seem to adapt well to driving conditions. On one journey, we left with about 175 miles of predicted range, covered 90 miles and arrived with only 50 miles of indicated range left. Whatever the estimated range is, it's best to assume what you'll actually get is at least 20% less. 

A DC rapid charging rate of 100kW is nothing particularly special these days, although its 20-80% recharge time of 26 minutes sounds reasonable enough, you need to remember that because of the car's modest-sized battery, that kind of top-up is probably only going to get you about 120 miles of real-world range. 

Plugged into a 7kW home wallbox, it'll take about eight hours to charge the battery from 0-100%. It's generally not recommended to use a domestic three-pin outlet to charge an EV, but if it's unavoidable, you'll need about 26 hours and 25 minutes to do the same. 

There's a strange theme with recent models from this brand in riding very firmly, something which the Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric is unfortunately a part of. We wouldn't call it crashy but the suspension never seems to settle, with a constant jiggling that doesn't go away. 

This firmness does mean the car stays relatively flat if you go quickly around a corner or tackle a roundabout with enthusiasm but we'd happily have a bit more body roll if the car were just a little more comfortable. It's not like it ever really encourages you to drive in a sporty manner anyway, especially with its vague steering. 

The Astra Electric's modest power output means that the driven front wheels are rarely overwhelmed, generating decent traction even at full throttle. The car never feels lacking in terms of grip, either. It also doesn't feel excessively heavy, helped by the use of a modest-sized battery. Yes, it's about 250kg heavier than a mild-hybrid Astra Sports Tourer, but that's actually not a massive increase by EV standards. In any case, the batteries are packaged low in the car's structure, giving a low centre of gravity that masks the weight gain. 

Refinement at speed is decent enough, with wind noise kept to an acceptably low level, although the road noise is a bit more vocal than we'd like. It probably doesn't help the Astra's cause that there's no engine noise to mask this. The motor, meanwhile, never passes more than a faint whirr into the cabin. 

There's only one motor option in the Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric. This produces 156PS powering the front wheels. Performance is modest, with 0-62mph arriving in 9.2 seconds. The top speed is 105mph. 

Helping the Astra's cause is 270Nm of instantly available torque, so it does at least feel eager off the line. There's also an effortless feeling as the Vauxhall picks up speed, something you certainly don't get in the thrashy 1.2-litre mild-hybrid powered Astras.

There is a slight delay in the car accelerating when pressing the throttle, although this is shortened if Sport mode is selected. On the subject of modes, there's a B (brake) setting available via the gear selector as an alternative to D (drive), giving much stronger regenerative braking. This will slow the car significantly if you come off the accelerator pedal but it's not quite strong enough to enable full one-pedal driving. 

The Vauxhall Astra was crash tested by Euro NCAP in 2022 and was awarded four stars out of five. An underwhelming score of 66% for its safety assistance features and 67% for its vulnerable road users wouldn't have helped its quest to achieve the full five stars. For adult occupants, meanwhile, it was rated at 80%, and 82% for child occupants. 

All versions of the Astra Sports Tourer Electric feature adaptive cruise control, forward collision alert, traffic sign recognition, lane-keeping assistance, traffic sign recognition, a driver drowsiness alert and autonomous emergency braking. Ultimate models add cross-traffic alert and a lane-change assistance system. 

The Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric isn't rated to tow at all, which feels like a bit of a miss for an estate. That said, it's the same case for the closely related Peugeot E-308 SW. 

The Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric has a boot space of 516 litres behind the rear seats, a significant drop from the 597 litres offered by the non-plug-in versions. The rear bench folds in a 40/20/40 split to expand that figure to 1553 litres, which compares with 1634 litres in the non-electric Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer.

Its low, sloping roofline means that bulkier items, such as that bargain second-hand sofa or chest of drawers you've snagged online, could prove trickier to fit, while also resulting in less than generous rear headroom. Rear legroom is decent, though. 

In the front, there are two cupholders under a sliding cover and a lidded cubby just in front. Further back is a handy little storage area, which is useful for keys and behind it, a decent-sized storage area under the central armrest. 

Everything in the Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric feels put together well and like it should last, but a lot of the materials used feel inside feel cheap. We're also not keen on the vast swathes of shiny plastic trim, which soon picks up smudgy fingerprints and light scratches. 

All versions of the Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric have a 10.0-inch infotainment touchscreen housed in one large, wide panel with a digital instrument cluster of the same size alongside it. That's not massive by modern standards but the setup is easy enough to use, and responsiveness is decent.

We also appreciate that you don't have to use it for climate control functions, as is the case on a lot of other related products from Stellantis. Instead, the Astra gives you a proper row of physical buttons just below the screen, just the way it should be.

Wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are included as standard but we had problems when using the latter system, with the car not reconnecting the phone automatically on some uses. Eventually we had to delete the phone from the system before adding it back again, which was a faff.

On the plus side, it's a good integration of Android Auto, allowing you to split the screen between two functions. For instance, you can load up Spotify without it taking over the entire screen and temporarily losing view of the navigation. 

There isn't a branded, premium audio option in the configurator, although Ultimate-trimmed cars have eight speakers rather than six. The standard six-speaker setup is decent enough, although the DAB radio quality is poor, sounding noticeably worse than when using streaming services. 

The entry-level Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric Griffin is £34,705 with the government's Electric Car Grant (ECG) applied. It's £36,950 for the mid-range GS and the Ultimate is £38,495. These prices represent a £1200 increase across the board compared with the equivalent Vauxhall Astra Electric hatchbacks. The non-electric Astra Sports Tourer can be bought from £29,685, £33,180 and £36,495 in those same trim levels for comparison.

With the MG 5 discontinued, there's no cut-price alternative to the Astra It looks like good value compared to the £50k+ Volkswagen ID.7 Tourer, but that's a much bigger car that can go a lot further on a charge, so it isn't really comparable. We're just clutching at straws because there are so few EV wagons, as already explained.

The closest competitor comes from another brand owned by the massive Stellantis group of manufacturers. The Peugeot E-308 SW is made using a lot of the same bits and pieces but is more comfortable and a bit plusher inside than the Vauxhall. It costs from £34,660.

EVs are no longer exempt from paying Vehicle Excise Duty (VED), better known as road tax, so it will be £195 a year to pay on the Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric. EVs are also now liable for the Expensive Car Supplment — the so-called premium car tax — with £425 payable from years two to six, but you should be fine with the Astra as the only way you can breach the £40,000 threshold is by picking the top-spec Ultimate and ticking all of the few optional extras that are available. 

The Sports Tourer Electric is in insurance group 26E for the Griffin and GS, while the Ultimate is in group 27E. It'll likely cost a fair bit more to insure than the petrol-powered versions of the car, which range from groups 19E to 22E. 

The Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric is available in three trim levels, which you'll find on many other Vauxhall models — Griffin, GS and Ultimate.

The previously available Design entry-level trim has been discontinued.

The Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric Griffin includes the following equipment as standard:

• LED headlights
• Front and rear parking sensors
• 10.0-inch touchscreen infotainment system
• 10.0-inch digital instrument cluster
• Wireless Apple CarPlay/Android Auto
• Automatic windscreen wipers
• Keyless start
• 18-inch alloy wheels
• Heated front seats

Upgrading to the Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric GS adds:

• 360-degree parking camera
• Dual-zone climate control
• Keyless entry/start
• Jet black interior styling features
• Sports-style front and rear bumpers
• Dark-tinted rear windows 

Upgrading to the range-topping Vauxhall Astra Sports Tourer Electric Ultimate adds: 

• Pixel headlights
• Lane change assistance
• Head-up display
• Wireless smartphone charger
• Soundproofed windscreen
• Sports front seats
• Electrically operated tailgate 
• Panoramic sunroof
• Electrically adjustable driver's seat