• Bigger than before
• More boot and rear seat space
• Plenty of cubbies inside

The new Grandland is 173mm longer than before, which has helped to liberate an extra 20mm of legroom for those in the back. It’s also 19mm taller and 64mm wider, improving head and shoulder room. In practice, front space is generous with lots of adjustment to enable most shapes and sizes to get comfortable. Supportive seats help you stay that way.

There’s room for a six-foot three-inch person to sit behind someone an identical height with a few inches of room for their knees, and similar amounts of headroom. A bit more space under the front seats for feet would be welcome, and we suspect a Skoda Enyaq or Renault Scenic would offer more lounging room. We’ll be group testing a range of these electric family SUVs in the new year to verify this.

Boot space and storage

Vauxhall has also given the Grandland more storage space. Its seats-up boot capacity has grown from 514 litres to 550 litres (ahead of the e-3008) – and there are more than 35 litres of storage bins dotted around the car’s cabin.

This includes smartphone pockets in the front seat backrests, lots of storage in the centre console and Vauxhall’s brand-new Pixel Box (standard on GS and Ultimate. This is a storage bin that’s been specially designed to hold a smartphone. It has a built-in wireless charger and a smoked glass lid so you can see your phone is there, but not be distracted by notifications.

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It’s also worth mentioning that, while the Grandland’s seats-up boot capacity has increased, its maximum boot capacity has fallen ever so slightly from 1652 to 1641 litres. Once again, the Enyaq is ahead here. The Grandland does get a useful 40/20/40 split folding rear seat, and there’s a variable height boot floor. With the floor in its highest position you get somewhere to store your cables, and a very low loading lip.

Is it easy to park?

It’s easy enough to judge the extremities of the Grandland Electric, and all models get front and rear parking sensors plus a rear-view camera. This is enough to make parking your Grandland easy enough on Design and GS trims.

Upgrade to Ultimate and you benefit from a 360 degree camera system with a variety of views to pick from. It helps, but the camera resolution is nowhere near as high as the best systems out there.

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Safety

Euro NCAP is yet to test the Grandland Electric or the Peugeot E-3008 with which it shares a platform, although we’d expect a new platform from a major automotive conglomerate to score at least four stars, ideally five.

All versions get automatic emergency braking, lane keep assist, traffic sign recognition and even adaptive cruise control. GS adds adaptive LED headlights that illuminate more of the road with your main beam, even with traffic present. Move up to top Ultimate trim and you also get semi-autonomous driving tech that’ll do much of the steering and braking on a motorway, a rear cross traffic alert and lane change assist.