Vauxhall Corsa-e 2020 UK first drive

This new version of the Vauxhall Corsa is surely Britain’s best-selling electric car elect.

As keenly priced and with a real-world electric range as good as a whole host of other recently arrived zero-emissions rivals, the Corsa-e isn't lacking in showroom appeal, nor in the number of Vauxhall showrooms across the country in which to be sold. Just as the Vauxhall Corsa supermini has been the first car of so many people over the years, the Corsa-e is likely to be the first electric car of many more.

We were impressed with the Vauxhall Corsa-e on first acquaintance, back in the early spring in Germany, when one could cross a border freely before you-know-what. And now, a touch later than advertised due to you-know-what, the Corsa-e is with Vauxhall dealers, ready to try to convert buyers from the pump to the plug. First, it must try to win us over in this initial UK test. 

The story behind this new, sixth-generation Corsa is well known: hastily re-engineered from scratch when Opel-Vauxhall switched from General Motors ownership to the PSA Group, it made it through development in record time as a sibling to the Peugeot 208 and is offered with petrol, diesel and electric drivetrains, with little differences between the variants apart from the obvious.

Vauxhall, like all PSA brands, is adopting this multiple powertrain choice, including electric, across its future model lines rather than do stand-alone electric vehicles, because it believes electric becomes a less intimidating switch for buyers this way.

There’s certainly little to be intimidated by in this Corsa-e. It’s a Corsa, after all, smart enough but a little generic in style, even if much improved over its predecessor, which seemed to be on sale forever. Still, it’s a shame that Vauxhall has chiselled away some of the flair of its Peugeot sibling, one of the best-looking and best-proportioned superminis on sale today.

That goes for the inside, too, which you would consider a bit plain even before seeing what Peugeot does with the same architecture.

Some subtle 'e' badging and bespoke alloy wheels are all there is externally to tell an electric Corsa from a conventional one, but the changes are more drastic under the skin, where the front and rear tracks have been widened, wheelbase marginally lengthened, front suspension beefed up and rear torsion beam moved back slightly – all to accommodate the H-shaped 50kWh lithium ion battery pack in the floor.