Fleet World Fleet: Vauxhall Astra Ultimate PHEV
The Astra PHEV continues to put its best face forward despite a slight parking blunder. By Nat Barnes.
List price (BiK): £40,845 (12%) CO2: 24g/km MPG/ EV range: 256mpg / 42 miles Test efficiency: 82.3mpg
Report 8:
Just how on earth could you be so incredibly stupid? No, not the words of Editor Challen’s wife on an almost daily basis, but the words aimed at myself from my own mouth after possibly the stupidest and slowest accident in the history of the car.
The location was a Sunday morning in a car park in mid-Wales. Tackling another stage of Offa’s Dyke meant a very early start to get to my finish point and catch a taxi to my start point. Having parked in the middle of the deserted car park, I decided to move the car to one of the empty spaces on the side, where I figured it might be safer.
That didn’t account however for the idiot behind the steering wheel (me). In backing into another space and concentrating on the side of the car while not concentrating the rear parking sensors, I tapped the stone wall just behind me at a breakneck speed of around 1mph.
Frustrating yes, but while normally that might have meant a light scratch it didn’t account for the rusty metal peg mounted in the wall that had punched a perfect 1cm square hole in the rear bumper. Unbelievable. I swore at myself. A lot.
I almost felt sorry for the car too, because I’d been enjoying its handling so much until that point. Over the years, Vauxhall has always been perceived as being behind Ford, particularly with the Focus, but this new Astra can be hustled with a respectable degree of enthusiasm when required.
Usual behaviour for a plug-in hybrid? Perhaps not, but as my Offa’s Dyke takes me further into mid-Wales, I’m now getting more and more cross-country driving to my start point. And, better yet, it’s often early morning with little traffic, so the Astra can show off its sharp, accurate steering, good turn-in and plentiful grip. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that this generation of Astra is possibly the best-handling one yet. It’s just a shame that this generation of the Barnes family hasn’t learned how to properly park it yet….
Report 7:
Nobody likes being told off. Least of all when you’re being told off by your car. In fairness, it was probably deserved.
I’ve been doing a lot of non-PHEV friendly miles in my Vauxhall Astra PHEV of late. More stages of Offa’s Dyke have meant lots of motorway miles, but the real kick in the front grille to the Astra came with my late summer holidays.
A week down in North Devon in a rented cottage with no charging facilities (the lettings document even outright-banned use of granny cables to charge) meant that aside from leaving my Marlow home with a full charge, the Astra was being driven in a standard hybrid mode, rather than being plugged in, for the entire week.
Apart from meeting some friends mid-way on the return and grabbing a few hours on a hotel car park charger (slow at 3kW, but free), we did no charging whatsoever. The result was a notification about the fact that I’d taken 17 journeys and five days without charging. Fair enough as a reminder, but it still made me feel guilty.
The result, inevitably, is that it has put a dent in my average fuel economy to 80.6mpg. However, for my seven-day trip away, over the 650 or so miles we did in those seven days, the average for that alone was 61mpg, which I was still quite impressed by.
A lot of EV fans will gladly knock plug-in hybrids for their continued use of petrol engines but I remain a big fan of them. As a stepping stone to full EV ownership, I still believe there’s a place for them – and that kind of average mpg for that trip alone (as well as that continued overall figure) is to be praised.
It’s a good example of how Vauxhall is to be applauded too. With the fully electric Astra on its way to showrooms, it’s offering a great breadth of choice of technology to customers, exactly what a mass market manufacturer should be doing and a rarity outside of the Stellantis and Korean brands.
Report 6:
Wow, you’re hot. No, I’m not having brain fade and repeating our second report, but once again I was having issues with my temperature in the Astra Plug-in Hybrid.
It occurred on one of my road trips for another leg of Offa’s Dyke (see previous report). Heading down the M4, having started out with a full charge, the moment the charge from the battery was used up and the engine kicked in, things started heating up in the cabin. No amount of turning down the temperature controls (already on 17 as it was) or switching on the air con would stop boiling hot air from coming through the vents.
Now, call me old-fashioned, but driving at motorway speeds with the windows open is not my idea of enjoyment, but it was the only option to avoid the Astra turning into a mobile sauna. A quick comfort stop and the problem had disappeared, so I thought it was a one-off…
Except, of course, I wasn’t that lucky. The same trip two days later for the next leg and the problem returned. And this time, just turning the car briefly off and on again, didn’t solve the issue. Vauxhall asked for it back, but unfortunately – and frustratingly – couldn’t find anything wrong. Instead, they did a hard reset, which seems to have solved the problem for the moment. Fingers crossed it stays that way.
Along with the previous outlined issues, the Astra hasn’t been entirely niggle-free elsewhere either, especially the infotainment system, which seems to have a mind of its own. Apple CarPlay can be very hit and miss, even if I connect my phone via a cable, and can work one moment and not the next, with no logical explanation.
All that said however, while our average mpg has dropped a bit with all of our longer journeys, at 87.4mpg, that is still highly impressive in my book. We’ve got some long journeys over the rest of the summer, but hopefully we can get that back above 90mpg again.
Report 5:
177 miles. An easy enough distance to cover over a handful of hours in a car, but it takes rather longer by foot. That’s the distance of Offa’s Dyke, the ancient route that roughly follows the border between Wales and England and that I’ve chosen to walk in stages.
The good news is that the 12 stages in question comprise of daily walks of about 15-18 miles, so I don’t need to do it all in one hit. The bad news is that I don’t live anywhere near Wales, so those days comprise of an early rise to drive my Vauxhall Astra PHEV to my start point, do the walk, return to the car via bus or taxi and then drive home again. It makes for some long days.
As well as being a good test of my leg muscles and hiking boots, it’s also a good test for the Astra too. Being a largely rural walk, charging points are few and far between and I wouldn’t want to hog one for all the time of my walk. So, while I leave home with a full charge, after those initial 30 miles, I’m running in ‘self-charging’ hybrid mode to borrow that hateful term of a rival manufacturer…
It’s dented my overall mpg, but having reset the second trip to experiment on the return journey, the Astra is still returning in the region of 50-55mpg without any charge, which I don’t think is all that bad. It’s even more impressive as while the motorway miles are eaten up with ease, as my walk progresses into mid-Wales, I’m tackling plenty of twistier roads too.
While previous generations of Vauxhall Astra haven’t exactly covered themselves with glory in terms of driving dynamics, this certainly isn’t one of them. No, a plug-in hybrid isn’t your first thought when it comes to driver enjoyment, but actually there’s minimal body roll through corners, the steering is sharp and direct and turns in with a precision that the likes of a crossover could only ever dream of, and there’s plenty of grip too.
Furthermore, while driving enthusiastically is inevitably going to harm my overall fuel economy, I’ve taken to driving almost all of the time in B mode for maximum regenerative braking, so it’s not the disaster you might imagine. Plus, the Astra seems very good at constantly harvesting and using that EV power as much as possible – easily visible by the speedo showing in blue digits when running on electricity.
So, while my ‘Offa’s outings’ might not be the most flattering or natural journeys for the Astra PHEV, it continues to be perfectly capable. As for the driver, on the other hand – has anyone got any blister tape to hand?
Report 4:
In my last report I touched on the Electric Yellow paintwork of my Vauxhall Astra PHEV long-termer. A £700 option, we questioned whether it was worth it – as well as the value of sometimes slipping into a crowd rather than standing apart from it.
And since then, Fiat’s CEO, Olivier Francois, has joined the discussion. While obviously Francois often calls me personally to discuss the hue of the Fleet World long-termers, on this occasion it was a public statement saying that Fiat was no longer going to produce cars in grey paintwork.
Ignoring for a moment that Fiat and Vauxhall are sister firms under the Stellantis umbrella, whether you agree or disagree with that statement, it’s an interesting move for UK drivers when grey is such a popular colour for new cars – accounting for one in four new cars sold according to the SMMT. It’s unlikely to be a deciding factor for any potential buyers, but as supply eases and new car sales will get more competitive, dealers could probably do without any excuses for some not to buy a car.
Then there’s whether you actually want to stand out in a crowd. The good side is that it’s easy to find the Astra in a busy car park when you have those brand fade moments about where you parked – and as I near the mature years of Editor Challen, those moments come ever more frequently.
The bad side however was demonstrated when I got involved in a road rage incident in London in a similarly brightly coloured car. On an occasion where all I wanted to do was slip away into the busy London traffic unnoticed, I was all too aware that that wasn’t possible.
That colour scheme extends to the black grille of the Astra too. With a blacked-out Vauxhall badge, I often find that many observers don’t realise it’s a Vauxhall – or indeed even an Astra. Don’t get me wrong, I think this latest Astra is arguably the best-looking ever to wear the badge, but at the moment I feel that Vauxhall needs all the brand recognition it can get and having a badge that’s effectively hidden doesn’t help that.
Report 3:
Our Electric Yellow Vauxhall Astra Plug-In Hybrid has made a welcome return with me after a two-week absence – trapped air to blame for its odd thirst for coolant.
But my brief time with a 1.2-litre petrol – and the novelty of manually changing gear once more – bought into sharp focus the differences with driving a traditional ICE car as opposed to a PHEV. I’ve been pretty impressed by the Astra PHEV’s fuel economy until now, easily above 80mpg with regular charging and lots of short journeys.
At the same time, I have to admit that I wasn’t relishing the idea of driving an ICE vehicle again, but even so, over our two weeks, I averaged 48.6mpg which, including some long motorway journeys, I thought was pretty good. It’s a reminder too that as good as PHEVs can be with regular charging, that modern petrols can be respectably frugal too.
The return of the golden PHEV has convinced us about its colour too. After an unpleasant road rage incident many years ago, where we realised the value of not standing out in traffic, we’ve been inclined to avoid cars in brighter colours, but we’re coming round to the Electric Yellow – even if it is a £700 option. It certainly makes the Astra easy to spot in a car park, for which we’re very grateful after the gunmetal grey ICE Astra.
In the meantime, we’ve got a number of longer motorway journeys planned for our Astra PHEV as we travel to walk Offa’s Dyke in Wales in day stages, so hopefully those don’t pull down our average mpg too much.
Report 2:
“Wow, you’re hot.” No, not the words of Jennifer Aniston in the passenger seat to me as I drove my long-term Vauxhall Astra Plug-In Hybrid. In fact, it was me, talking alone to the Astra itself.
Three weeks into our time with the Astra, things have been going pretty positively. The Astra’s previously disappointing EV range has been steadily climbing as the ambient temperature has improved and as it has learned my driving style. From the original 19, a full charge now typically reads in the low 30s and we’ve even seen 36 miles on a couple of occasions.
We’ve switched to a 1.2-litre petrol Astra GS Line while Vauxhall checks out the coolant issue with the PHEV
Judicious charging and a lack of long journeys though have meant that we’ve rarely drawn on the Astra’s 1.6-litre turbo petrol engine for any length of time. Until that is a recent journey up the M1 saw the Astra suddenly bring up an engine temperature warning light shortly after having used up all of its battery power.
Pulling into some nearby services and lifting the bonnet showed that the coolant level in the header tank was below minimum, so after a short top-up with some water in the car, we were back on our way again and thought nothing more of it.
Until that is, a quick check two days later showed it to have returned back down that minimum level. Thinking it must have been some air in the system, we carried out another top-up and made a mental note to keep an eye on it. The car ensured that it didn’t just stay in my memory though and another two days on, the warning light was back on and the coolant level back down to minimum once more.
With clearly something amiss, the Astra has gone back to Vauxhall for some investigation work. In the meantime, I’m now in a 1.2-litre petrol Astra GS Line and remembering what a gearstick and clutch pedal are for, having driven EVs and PHEVs for so long. I certainly miss driving under electric power, but at 49.2mpg, this new petrol Astra is proving impressive.
Report 1:
Not so many years ago, it would have been hard to over-estimate the significance of this new Vauxhall Astra Plug-in Hybrid to the new car market.
Like the Focus and Golf, the Astra was such a huge player in the car market that they would soon be commonplace on every street and car park. Except that I’ve been driving this new Astra long-termer for two weeks and have seen less than a handful of others on the road – something that would have been utterly inconceivable until the rise of crossovers to British roads.
And that, ironically, seems to me an even better reason to be driving one. Plus, I’m the perfect candidate having just stepped out of our Ford Kuga long-termer, the kind of family car that the Astra needs to convince drivers out from.
Our Astra PHEV family hatch certainly has the standout factor
Certainly, the numbers stack up. A 1.6-litre turbo petrol linked to a 12.4kWh battery giving it 180bhp, 24g/km emissions and, on paper at least, a 42-mile electric range – more on which in a moment.
Those stats are backed up with looks too and I love the design of the new Astra, especially in the optional metallic Electric Yellow of my test car – it certainly makes it easy to spot and find in busy car parks.
Except that my first impression wasn’t positive. And the reason, ironically, had nothing to do with me or even the car, but clearly the previous incumbent who must have had a right foot like an anvil. The reason was that despite a fully charged battery, the electric range was showing as just 19 miles. That’s not just not in the same postcode as the claimed 42 miles, that’s not even in the same country.
While I’m not naïve enough to think that I’ll be able to match that EAER 42-mile figure, I wasn’t too impressed with a figure less than half that. An explanation from Vauxhall however said that the trip computer learned from the previous usage and it would soon correct itself to a higher number. And, lo and behold, they were right. With every new charge, the range has steadily grown and I’m currently (pardon the pun) at 31 miles. Let’s hope it keeps growing.
Nat Barnes
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