Vauxhall Combo Life Electric Review 2025: Price, specs & boot space

If you have a large family that is permanently accompanied by a vast amount of life clutter, and you need room to comfortably accommodate everyone and everything, but you don’t want a car that’s absolutely enormous, then few cars will suit you better than this.

There’s only one powertrain available, so it really comes down to only a choice of trim levels. For us, you’re probably better off with the entry-level Design trim, because it comes with most of what you need. Ultimate trim costs a good couple of grand more, and all it really adds is automatic climate control, a heated leather steering wheel, and a 180-degree reversing camera. There are a few aesthetic upgrades as well, but even with those, the Combo is never going to be the most glamorous-looking car you’ll ever come across.

Park the Combo Life next to the Citroen Berlingo and Peugeot Rifter, and you’ll notice some massive similarities. There’s a good reason for this: beneath the different badges and slightly reworked facial treatments, all three cars are exactly the same. Same platform, same powertrains, some interior, same tech, everything.

If you don’t like these for any reason, then there are other models to choose from in the compact van-based MPV sector. The Volkswagen Caddy is a very popular choice, while Ford offers two models in the Tourneo Connect and Tourneo Courier.

The Combo Life is derived from a panel van, and that’s pretty evident when you climb inside the car. The plastics that form the vast majority of the interior surfaces are of the hard-and-durable variety rather than being of a soft-and-squidgy persuasion, so there are many passenger cars of this size that feel posher. Having said that, though, the cabin feels by no means cheap, and it should prove very hard-wearing, which if you’ve got a large family, might be a better attribute to have.

Early on in the life of the, er, Life, it came with an 8.0-inch central colour touchscreen and 10-inch digital dials. This infotainment system supports DAB radio, Bluetooth, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. You also have USB ports front and rear, six speakers, and steering wheel audio controls. Native navigation could be added as an optional extra.

During the facelift in 2024, the Life’s infotainment system was upgraded in some ways and downgraded in others. In both trim levels, the central touchscreen was enlarged to a 10.0-inch item, while Design’s speaker count was cut to four, and Ultimate trim maintained its six. The range of functionality remained largely the same.

Either way, the user interface is reasonably simple, so if you spend a few minutes familiarising yourself with the system, you’ll find it fairly easy to navigate your way around and locate and operate the car’s various functions. There are still a couple of minor irritations, though: a few of the animations and screen transitions take rather too long, and the screen sensitivity isn’t the best, so you might find yourself repeatedly jabbing at the screen to register an instruction successfully.

This is the whole reason you buy a car like the Combo Life, but even when viewed through that lens, it does a sensational job. There are two different versions. The standard one measures 4.4 metres in length and comes with five seats, while the XL version is a little longer at 4.75 metres, and comes with two extra pews (which are tiltable and removable) to make it a seven-seater.

In either, every single seat is roomy enough to accommodate a tall adult in comfort. The high roof means there’s lots of headroom, and it also helps facilitate an upright seating position in all of the chairs, which maximises legroom. Getting in and out is also made super-easy - especially in tight parking spaces - but wide-opening sliding rear doors on both sides of the car.

If anything, the luggage space on offer is even more impressive, which should come as little surprise in a can that’s derived from a van. Starting with the standard five-seat version, the figures published by Vauxhall say that you get a humongous 775 litres of boot space beneath the load cover (or 2,130 litres if you load all the way up to the ceiling), or up to 4,414 litres when travelling in two-seat mode.

Go for the XL version, and there’s just 209 litres behind the third-row seats, but if you remove those (you’ll need somewhere to store them), then you get 1,050 litres beneath the load cover, or 2,950 litres when loaded up to the ceiling. Fold the second row down as well to travel in two-seat mode, and there’s a maximum of 5,172 litres of cargo space available.

Buy an SE version on the used car market, or select a car in Design trim, and the second row of seats takes the form of a 60/40 split-folding bench, while in later Ultimate cars, you get three individual seats in the middle row that fold down independently of one another for more versatility. Vauxhall says that the seats fold flat either way, but they don’t. With both arrangements, you're left with both a slight step and a slight slope in your extended load bay.

If you don’t want to stop your seat-folding antics there, then you can also fold down the front passenger seat. This allows you to carry extra-long items in your Combo: up to 2.7 metres long in the regular car, and over 3.0 metres long in the XL. 

The Combo has a few other tricks up its sleeve to enhance practicality, too. There are picnic tables in row two, plus an absolute shedload of convenient storage spaces dotted around the cabin. Yes, it can be difficult to open the super-long tailgate unless there’s lots of space behind the car, but the rear window can open independently of the rest of it, so you can drop smaller items into the boot without having to.

The battery pack in the electric Combo Life stands at 52kWh, and this feeds an electric motor that’s capable of delivering 136PS. We say ‘capable’, because it doesn’t always: the amount of power you actually get depends on which of the three different driving modes you select.

To get the lot, you need to select Power mode, but even then, the Combo isn’t exactly quick. The benchmark 0-62mph sprint takes 11.7 seconds, and while the pickup feels sprightly off the line, the acceleration is unfurled relatively gently from then on.

At the other end of the spectrum is Eco mode. This pares back your power output to just 82PS in order to preserve more range. It also reduces the functionality of your air-con and heating for the same reason. Predictably, your progress becomes much slower, although you still get just about enough urge to keep pace with traffic at low-to-middling speeds without feeling like you’re getting in anyone’s way.

And if you want either of these modes, you will have to select them, because the car defaults to Normal mode when you start it. This provides a middle ground between the two extremes, with 109PS provided. However, performance levels feel closer to Power mode than they do to Eco.

Whichever mode you select, the acceleration you get is delivered in one constant unbroken stream. That’s because, like most EVs, the Combo doesn’t have a gearbox, because it simply doesn’t need one, so there are no gearchanges to get in the way of your progress.

According to official WLTP figures published by Vauxhall, the Combo-e Life initially had a combined range of 174 miles. This was improved during the 2024 facelift thanks to efficiency tweaks within the drivetrain, boosting the range figure up to 213 miles.

Either way, these figures aren’t great compared to those delivered by some EVs. And what’s more, like all EVs, those figures should not be relied on in the real world, because they’re an absolute best-case scenario. Even in seemingly optimum conditions, plan on getting a good slice less, and if you’re doing mostly motorway miles in very cold weather, your return could drop to around half the claimed figure, based on our experience with the car. 

This is another area in which your expectations may be low due to the Combo Life’s commercial vehicle roots, and again, you may be pleasantly surprised. Yes, wind- and road noise is present at middling to high speeds, but it’s well suppressed enough that it doesn’t cause you any discomfort or irritation. The inherent quietness of the electric motor relative to a combustion engine also helps elevate refinement levels. You do hear the odd clonk from the suspension as it goes about its work, but that’s in no way troublesome, so this is a peaceful way of getting around.

No matter which version of the Combo Life Electric you go for, you get broadly the same amount of safety kit. That includes automatic emergency braking, lane departure warning, lane keep assist, speed sign recognition, driver drowsiness detection, high-beam assist headlights, and six airbags.

It seems a little mean that adaptive cruise control isn’t standard on any version and only comes as part of an expensive option pack, which is only available on the most expensive Ultimate trim.

The Combo was subjected to crash tests by Euro NCAP in 2018 before it was available as an electric car, but the body states that the same result still applies. Sadly, it wasn’t amazing: it scored four out of five stars, which doesn’t sound terrible by today’s standards, but that was at a time when the majority of models tested were scoring the full five-star rating.

The Vauxhall Combo Electric is a fairly niche product, so it doesn’t sell in large enough numbers to make a significant impact in the various reliability and customer satisfaction surveys doing the rounds. This is certainly true of our go-to source of reliability data, the HonestJohn.co.uk Satisfaction Index, put together by our brilliant sister website.

The study tells a mixed story about Vauxhall as a brand, though. It doesn’t feature in the list of the top 10 best manufacturers for reliability, but it doesn’t feature on the list of the 10 worst in that area, either (although it should be noted that the Combo shares its mechanicals with models from Citroen and Peugeot, and both those brands feature on that second list, worryingly).

Look at the manufacturer rankings for overall customer satisfaction, though, and Vauxhall places stone-dead last out of the 29 brands considered. This suggests that Vauxhall owners aren’t a particularly happy bunch, but it might not be the reliability of their cars that’s responsible.

The warranty you get with the Combo isn’t great, either. You get one year of unlimited mileage cover, but years two and three are limited to 60,000 miles.

No version of the Combo Life Electric is particularly cheap to insure, and none is particularly pricey, either. Insurance groupings for the car run between 18 and 23 depending on the precise spec, and considering that these groupings run from groups 1 to 50, with cars in the highest groups being the most expensive to cover, then it suggests you can expect fair-to-middling premiums on all versions.

Because it’s now only available as an electric car, the Combo Life is currently exempt from road tax. Don’t expect that to be the case for long, though, because in April 2025, the VED exemption for EVs is due to expire. When it does, electric car owners will likely face the same road tax costs as drivers of petrol and diesel cars. That’s currently charged at £190 per year for petrol and diesel cars, but we’d be staggered if this isn't hiked when April comes around.

Early on in its life, the Combo-e Life was offered in a single high-spec trim level called SE. On top of all the safety and infotainment kit we’ve already talked about, this came with air-conditioning, a leather-covered steering wheel, an electronic parking brake, alloy wheels, front foglights, powered- and heated door mirrors, automatic lights and wipers, rear-view camera, reversing sensors, powered front- and rear windows, and cruise control.

Later on, when the car was rechristened as the Combo Life Electric, the choice of trim levels became a little broader, with two being offered. Entry-Level Design trim had manual air-con, a plastic steering wheel with audio controls, an electronic parking brake, front fog lights, 16-inch steel wheels, powered- and heated door mirrors, automatic lights and wipers, Matrix LED headlights with high-beam assist, rear parking sensors, and cruise control.

Ultimate trim is the range-topper. This looks a little smarter with a slightly revised bumper design, rear privacy glass and 16-inch alloy wheels, and the upgrade also gets you automatic climate control, a heated leather steering wheel, and a 180-degree reversing camera.

One item of desirable kit that’s missing from the standard roster at either level is adaptive cruise control: you can have it, but it only comes as part of an expensive option pack, which is only available on Ultimate trim.