Vauxhall Frontera: The Ultimate Bang For Buck Family Car?
This is the new Vauxhall Frontier. Now, I think the headline story with this car is the price. It comes in two flavors. You can get a petrol hybrid version or a pure electric version. But here’s the rub. The hybrid version costs £2,000 more than the pure electric version. I reckon that’s a first. Now, the excuse for a higher priced electric vehicles was always down to the batteries. batteries are really expensive and that was the big worry. But I think things are changing rather fast. Now that is the substantially cheaper Vauxhall Frontra and this is everything electric cars. Our three free YouTube channels on EVs and clean tech are funded by our fun-packed test driveetastic events in Farra, London, the Southwest, the North, Melbourne and Sydney. And next up, we’re in Canada for Everythingele Electric Vancouver. And new for UK viewers, you can now buy a battery EV and much more at everythingleelectric.store. Now, back to the episode. Just a quick recap here. Back in 2010, it cost about $1,800 to make 1 kWh of battery cells. Now, this year, that price has dropped to between $60 and $80. And I think that makes a bit of a difference. So we’re seeing this of course reflected in the cost of Chinese cars because they make the batteries. So everyone has to buy the batteries from China basically. So that’s one of the reasons they can do it a bit cheaper. But also it is now finally starting to be reflected in the prices that Stalantis are charging for their cars. They the reason they can sell these cars cheaper is because the batteries are cheaper. That’s the big point I want to make. So the price starts at 22,500 for this vehicle that I’m driving, but with the UK government grant of 1,500 quid, obviously that takes it that makes it one of the cheapest electric cars available in the UK. Around the rest of the world, I don’t know about the prices, but that’s what it is here. And it goes from 22,500 to 24,500. And and basically, it’s the same car, but the interior will have a bit more quality gizmos and stuff like that. But the thing about this car is I think it’s a really important point. It is detoxed. It is super clean, simple, and easy to use. Instantly, there’s like none of the hassles that I’ve had in the past where I’ve been driving a car and talking about it and it’s beeping at me. Do you know how I stopped it beeping? I pressed one button, no beeps. So, the Voxal Frontier really does offer a big, spacious interior. And I mean it’s much bigger than cars that are in a roughly the same price range. Although it’s cheaper than all of them, but the like the MG4, the BYD dolphin, roughly the same uh the same cost, but much much smaller to get the same size in terms of seating capacity and storage in the back. You’ve got to go to a Hyundai Kona, which is £10,000 more expensive than this. So all Frontier come with this the same interior package, 10-in screen, which has got up to wireless Apple CarPlay, Android Auto. It’s got LED headlights. It’s got a reversing camera. All those things are absolutely standard. But one of the interesting things I think that Vauhall have done is they they describe as a digital detox. It is super simple. There isn’t loads and loads of menus and hundreds and hundreds of apps. It’s kind of stripped right back. And I’ve got to tell you, it’s kind of nice when you first get in it cuz you’re not going, “Oh my god, I’ve got to go through all these different things, all these hundreds of settings and menu levels.” This is really simple. Really simple information on the screen in front of you. really clear choice of things you can, you know, your your satnav, your radio, your your music. Yeah, that’s that’s basically it. Back seat. Let me have a go. Oh. Oh, easy to get in. Easy for an old bloke to get in. So, very spacious. That’s where the driver’s seat is for me driving. So, I’m just about a little bit less than 6′ tall. I’ve shrunk a bit. Uh USB 2’s there. One of the things I did notice is they they claim 20 I think it’s 24 lers of internal storage in the cabin like all the door pockets that bit there you know all the little bits of bit there’s nice door pocket here always useful in the back uh there’s storage pockets there plenty of headroom really plenty of headroom very basic I mean it’s it’s kind of stripped down and simple and I kind of like it you know there there’s really no fancy fancy pants stuff at all this material looks like it would last a long time um if you’ve got a small kid and they spill something on it, it would kind of it would wipe off. [Music] Well, considering the overall size of the car, the uh the boot or trunk is very roomy. Uh it’s 450 L of space here. Just when you lift it up, it has got an extra bit of storage down underneath there. You can put your cables or all your other gubbins down there. With the seats down, it’s 1,400 L. So, it’s a really big spacious uh capacity boot and no big lip there, so it’s easy to get stuff in and out. One slight complaint I would have is there’s no handle in here to close it. So, you have to touch the outside. Well, we’ve only driven this car maybe 4 km and it’s already dirty. It gets really dirty at the back here. So, you’re going to have a load of grubby hands. You’ll have to have a little plastic glove to close the boot. [Music] So, one of the incentives that Boxhall are giving for UK uh residents is there you can get £500 off a wall box off a charger wall box. You can get £500 off using uh credit using uh Octopus Electroverse, which means you can use a car to charge on rapid charges. 500 quid’s worth of charging. That’s a lot. or 500 quid off Tesco’s Podpoint chargers, which I use at my local Tesco’s. So that means you’ve effectively got free charging for like a couple of years. That is amazing. So the Frontier can charge on an a DC charger like this at 100 kW, which is not breathtakingly fast by today’s standards, but it’s very adequate. It can charge at home up to 11 kW on a on a AC charger. And uh it has two battery sizes. So there’s a 44 kWh battery and a 54 kWh battery. The first one gives you about 180 mi range. The second one gives you sort of 220ish maybe. Um nothing about the car is exceptional. Like the acceleration, it just goes along the road and it’s very reliable. That’s what you want. So from a point of view of driving experience, uh it’s super simple to drive. It’s super easy and it’s super unremarkable. I think that’s really fair to say that. And it’s not meant to be remarkable. So, I’m going to I’m just driving along. I’m doing 33 mph. I’m putting my foot hard down and I’m going faster, but not that you’d notice. I’d say this is one of the most gently accelerating electric vehicles I’ve ever been in. And that is not a criticism. It’s absolutely fine. It goes along really smoothly and nicely. It has a very smooth uh uh acceleratory curve, so you’re really not going to go, “Whoa, it’s going a bit too fast for me.” I mean, absolutely flat out going up a hill. We got up to 50 result. So, I think overall what you’ve got here is it is a little step change. Not a big step change, a little step change. It’s a sensible, reason, really reasonably priced, very competent electric car. And do you know what? I think this is a this is a vehicle that is really leading us to just describing these as cars. So then you’ll talk about a petrol hybrid or a petrolled car or a diesel car, but I just drive a car. I don’t want to I don’t want to use the word electric anymore. This is just a better car. I’m supremely and very positively unimpressed. [Music] So, if you’re considering an electric car and you’ve got a say a young family, it’s very hard not to recommend this. You know, it’s going to be it’s one of the cheapest cars you can get on the road in the UK. It’s got masses of storage space. It’s got loads of room for kids in the back. It’s very, very simple and easy to use. It charges fast enough. It goes far enough. It would be incredibly cheap to run if you have somewhere off the street to park it and you can charge it at your home. Th all those things are big big pluses. It’s it’s really that is what this car is all about. It’s not a fancy flash, you know, super high performance vehicle. It’s a sensible car to do sensible journeys for sensible people. So that’s it. The front I I can’t help it. I actually like it and it’s nothing special. That’s its big selling point. I think it’s nothing special. It’s a car. Anyway, please do have a look at our Patreon page. We’ve got a growing Patreon community. We’re doing more and more stuff on the Patreon page. Links are in the show notes beneath this. Please do tell your mates about everything electric cars. And uh that’s it. As always, if you have been, thank you for watching. Now visit electric vehicles.expert where you can follow everything electric and keep current with clean technica, the driven, electric, and many more.
Bobby takes a drive in the new Vauxhall Frontera, a compact crossover offering impressive practicality and space for an extremely reasonable price. With the EV costing the same as the petrol version, could this be the best value electric family car on sale today?
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