Vauxhall Frontera (2024 - ) Electric review

The new electric car grant makes the electric version of the Frontera cheaper than its hybrid sibling and Vauxhall has also partnered with charging providers to reduce running costs home and on the go. Whichever version of the Frontera you choose, it should cost absolute buttons to run, especially if you’re charging at home from cheap-rate night-time electricity. Doing lots of public charging, especially with the Frontera Electric’s modest 100kW charging speed, would be a different story, but for the usual short family hops across town, and on the school run, the battery powered Frontera will be very cheap to live with. If you’re getting a hybrid Frontera, then that should easily do around 50mpg if driven gently, so it won’t break the bank with fuel costs either.

Obviously, this new Frontera is too new for us to have a good idea about how reliable it might be, and the fact that it uses an entirely new small car platform (shared with Citroën and Fiat among others) means it’s even harder to tell. On the upside, the electric version is mechanically simple and lithium-iron phosphate batteries tend to be more robust than the more high-powered lithium-ion alternative. The hybrid version, meanwhile, shares its engine and hybrid system with lots of other models from Peugeot, Citroën and Fiat so it ought to be fairly solid.

While the likes of the Dacia Jogger have been criticised by safety experts for doing without electronic safety aids in the pursuit of a lower price tag, the Frontera looks to avoid that pitfall. It hasn’t been tested by Euro NCAP yet but even the basic Design model comes with traffic sign recognition, lane-keeping aid, active braking, collision warning, a reversing camera with sensors, driver attention alert and cruise control with a speed limiter. There are two ISOFIX points as well, both in the back seats.

Vauxhall makes a good deal of noise about its ‘Intelli-Seats’ which are an option for the Frontera and claim to reduce driver fatigue by 15 per cent. How it arrives at that figure is anyone’s guess, but the seats themselves — trimmed in a fabric made from recycled plastics — are certainly firm and supportive, and comfortable even when you’re spending several hours in the car. That’s true in the back seats too, where the same firmness and support applies, and there’s plenty of legroom and headroom even for taller passengers. There’s probably not enough space in the middle rear seat for a third person to get comfortable, though. The boot is decent without being especially large, but you can use the moveable boot floor to give yourself a flat load lip, and the rear seats fold down to open up 1,600 litres of space. Combine that with some useful storage up front and the Frontera’s a pretty practical thing. Hybrid versions can optionally be fitted with extra seats in the boot, making the Frontera a seven-seater. You don’t get that option with the Frontera Electric, but both models use the same basic suspension setup which is surprisingly soft and very good at soaking up the worst road surfaces, speed bumps in particular.

As standard, the Frontera comes with two 10-inch screens, one for the driver’s instruments and another for the infotainment. Both are easy enough to use, but the menu layout of the infotainment screen can be a bit baffling at times, and some items are not easy to find. Thankfully, there are proper physical controls for the air conditioning which makes life a lot easier, and the multi-function buttons on the steering wheel are also proper, physical items and not touch-sensitive pads. There are some neat touches in the cabin such as a handy open shelf above the glovebox on the passenger’s side, while there are as many as five USB-C ports, depending on the version, and an optional wireless phone charging pad. GS models get neat high-set seatback pockets for rear passengers, which are just the right size for stashing a phone and a pair of earbuds. Vauxhall has also seen sense and provided a simple one-touch button that turns off the annoying and often inaccurate speed limit warning.

If you’ve come here expecting the Frontera to be some sort of powerhouse we’d advise moderating your expectations. The Frontera Electric is powered by a 113-horsepower electric motor driving the front wheels and it takes a leisurely 12.1 seconds to reach 62mph from rest. To be fair, the performance never feels sluggish, until you try to give it the beans on an uphill stretch of motorway, at which point it can struggle. On slower roads, where the electric motor has a chance to gather itself, it’s much better, proving pleasantly perky around town with decent mid-range thrust. Unsurprisingly, the hybrid is faster, hitting 62mph in nine seconds dead, and generally feeling much fleeter than the electric model. Neither is what you call fast, but equally neither feels disastrously slow. They’re both also better to drive around corners than you might expect, with firmly weighted steering, decent body control and good front-end grip.