Vauxhall Grandland Electric long-term test: report 2
Our sub-editor needs a comfortable, practical car for a lengthy commute and active weekends. We're finding out if Vauxhall's electric flagship can go the distance...
The car Vauxhall Grandland Electric Ultimate Run by Chris Haining, sub-editor
Why it’s here To find out what Vauxhall's electric family SUV has to offer in what is a highly competitive class
Needs to be comfy and relaxing on a long motorway commute; economical to run; offer the practicality an action-packed life demands
Mileage 1786 List price £39,995 Best Price £39,995 Price as tested £40,645 Official range 322 miles Test range 268 miles
28 August 2025 – Teching things too far
Do androids dream of electric sheep? This novel, by Philip K Dick, is one of my favourites, while the 1982 science fiction movie it inspired – Bladerunner – is right up there among my top films. And, sitting behind the wheel of my Vauxhall Grandland Electric, I can’t help but think of the hovering car that the world-weary protagonist, Rick Deckard, uses when tracking down replicants for ‘retiring’. Now, I can’t say I’ve ever had that thought in a Vauxhall before.
Bladerunner’s visual cues were designed by the futurist and all-round genius Syd Mead in the late '70s, and I reckon he’d be impressed by the Grandland's interior. It’s all interesting angles, projecting edges and contrasting materials, with a sleek, narrow screen for driver information, and a bigger, glossier 16in panel for infotainment.
In addition, the gizmos that Deckard uses invariably having good old-fashioned switches as well as voice control – an approach replicated by Vauxhall, with piano-key style toggles for interior temperature and fan speed, flanked by buttons to short-cut to certain frequently used features. In short, the Grandland's interior aesthetic gets a solid thumbs up from me.
In addition, the gizmos that Deckard uses invariably having good old-fashioned switches as well as voice control – an approach replicated by Vauxhall, with piano-key style toggles for interior temperature and fan speed, flanked by buttons to short-cut to certain frequently used features. In short, the Grandland's interior aesthetic gets a solid thumbs up from me.
In theory, it's also terrific that you can customise the Grandland’s driver information display to show a variety of different data types, and that you can similarly reorganise how things are shown on the infotainment screen. Effectively, you can design and lay out your own custom pages, with whatever icons and ‘widgets’ you desire. However, as Bladerunner underlines, not all futuristic technology is perfect.
Customising the Grandland in this way involves choosing from a long list of icons and widgets of various shapes and sizes, the idea being that you Tetris them into the infotainment page you’re creating. But it’s all very fiddly, and none of the widgets on offer are given any explanation as to what they actually do.
I’d rather somebody do all this organising on my behalf, curating a decent choice of display layouts I can scroll through, like with Audi’s Virtual Cockpit, which I loved in the Audi A6 Avant I ran some time back. The Grandland does offer a few choices, but their scope is limited.
Possibly, given an extensive session on my drive at home, with a cup of coffee to keep me going, I could get my head around creating the layout of my dreams. But I’d rather invest that time in reading a good book.
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