Costs & verdict
Everyday costs, plus how reliable and safe it is
The Corsa-e costs quite a bit more to buy than some small electric cars, such as the Seat Mii Electric, Skoda Citigo e iV and Volkswagen e-Up, but then you'd expect that; it's a bigger car that can travel a lot farther between charges. Indeed, prices are broadly in line with the similar-sized Renault Zoe and Mini Electric.
As you might expect, there’s very little to split the pricing between the Corsa-e and its Peugeot e-208 cousin. The Peugeot has a lower starting price, but that’s because it‘s offered with a lower level of standard equipment than the entry-level Corsa-e provides (and the e-208’s entry-level specification is the trim we’d avoid). It is worth noting, however, that the e-208 is predicted to depreciate at a much slower rate.
The Corsa-e hasn’t been specifically tested by Euro NCAP, but the standard Corsa it’s based on achieved four stars out of five. That’s not brilliant; it lost points for doing a poor job at protecting front and rear seat passengers against whiplash. Thankfully, automatic emergency braking (AEB), lane-keeping assistance, and a driver drowsiness monitoring system come as standard. If you also want blind spot monitoring, you need to step up to Elite Nav.
We haven’t got any reliability data on the Corsa-e yet, but we can tell you that Vauxhall as a manufacturer finished a poor 27th-place out of 31 manufacturers in the 2019 What Car? Reliability Survey. Thankfully the Corsa-e is covered by a three-year, 60,000-mile warranty, while its battery gets an eight-year, 100,000-mile warranty.
