Vauxhall Astra Electric Sports Tourer review

It’s the handsome estate alternative to the already quite handsome Vauxhall Astra Electric hatchback. Both of which you can get in petrol, mild hybrid and plug-in hybrid form. Because variety is the spice of life, right?

The recipe for the ST is not complicated: take the Astra Electric, and add bigness. It’s 250mm longer than the hatch, 57mm of which comes from stretching out the wheelbase. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the major win here is boot space, which gets almost half as much bigger again. Swell.

I know estates aren’t exactly in vogue, but hubba, hubba…

We know, right? The Astra Sports Tourer wears Vauxhall’s now familiar distinctive black strip across the nose, while the sharp creasework along the bonnet and body gives the ST undeniable road presence. Gone are the days a Vauxhall looks dated the moment it rolls off the production line.

Four years on from launch and it’s undergone a minor facelift. Only the very eagle-eyed will have spotted the slightly narrower Zorro mask, but more obvious is the permanently illuminated front logo (as is carmakers' current obsession) and compass that runs horizontally into the headlights and vertically into the bonnet.

Prepare yourself for this next bit – there’s also fancy new headlights featuring 50,000 individual LED elements, up from 168 on the old car. Overkill? Perhaps. But apparently the new lights let you see 30-40m further ahead at 50mph, so maybe there's logic behind it after all. New alloy wheels and paint options complete the refresh.

The electric estate segment isn’t quite as sparse as it was when the Sports Tourer arrived. Its closest rival is the SW version of the e-308, which is effectively this car's cousin, while there’s also the VW ID.7 Tourer, Toyota bZ4X Touring, plus the Skoda Octavia estate in the not too distant future.

Gimme those powertrain numbers.

The Astra Sports Tourer is driven by a single synchronous motor, good for 154bhp and 199lb ft through the front wheels. It is… not quick. 0-62mph takes 9.5 seconds, placing it in the middle of the pack if you factor in what the turbo petrols are capable of.

Still, post-facelift range is up 22 miles courtesy of a slightly bigger 55.4kWh (net) battery for 275 miles total; just shy of what the hatch can do with a full charge. So a long way shy of what the longest range EVs are capable of, but – as we'll get to in the Driving section of this review – Vauxhall’s big play here is efficiency.

An 11kW AC charger will top up the cells in under six hours. On a 7kW home unit, it’ll be more like eight hours. DC charging maxes out at 100kW, and while that’s pretty slow nowadays stopping at a public charger or service station will still get you from 20-80 per cent in under half an hour. Ample time to stretch, pee, eat and doom scroll. In that order, naturally.

What’s it like inside?

When the Astra and Astra ST were revealed in 2022, we were very relieved to see that Vauxhall had spent some actual budget on the interior design of both cars. Unlike the latest Corsa, which is hobbled by what might be the biggest smart-exterior-to-dull-interior ratio of any car designed this side of the discovery of electricity. Lord almighty is it drab in there.

We digress. The Astra is in a different league, centred around a twin set-up of 10in infotainment and driver displays, housed in one unit that mimics the front strip on the outside of the car. Meanwhile the rest of the dashboard has been shaped in a visually arresting way, and there are buttons for stuff like the climate and volume controls. Hip hip hooray!

Come on then, what’s it gonna cost me?

Vauxhall has been making plenty of noise about price parity between its combustion engined and electric cars for a while now, and the Astra Sports Tourer is the latest proof in the pudding.

It starts from £29,995, which is identical to its mild hybrid and plug-in hybrid siblings. Only, when you throw in the £1.5k Electric Car Grant, it actually starts from £28,495 OTR. Yep, it undercuts both.

It’s also over £5k cheaper than the pre-facelift model – and identically priced to the hatch, in another big power play from Vauxhall. Generous kit levels, too. For full trim details, you want the Buying tab.

There are lots of things the Astra Electric Sports Tourer gets right, chiefly those dashing looks, grown up interior, and its focus on efficiency rather than massive range and performance. And the tidy tweaks made for the facelift show Vauxhall’s clearly been listening to customers (and us).

Sure, the ride’s pretty firm and there’s virtually no appreciable benefit for backseat passengers, owing to the modest legroom. But the price parity with the combustion versions and the fact it costs no more than the hatch make this a compelling option. Why wouldn’t you have it over the smaller one?