The Vauxhall Grandland will be reborn as an electric SUV to go on sale in the second half of 2024.
Confirmed by Vauxhall parent company Stellantis today, the new EV – which may not retain the Grandland name – will start rolling down the production line in Eisenach, Germany, following a €130 million investment to prepare the Opel plant to build EVs.
The EV will be a similar size to the Grandland currently built at Eisenach and based on the STLA Medium architecture that’s set to be first deployed on the new Peugeot e-3008 later this year.
Vauxhall hasn’t yet revealed any specifications, but the similarly sized and technically related Peugeot will be offered with a choice of three powertrains (including a dual-motor, four-wheel-drive layout) and a maximum range of 435 miles.
The Grandland successor will be Vauxhall’s third pure-electric car, joining the Vauxhall Corsa Electric and Vauxhall Astra Electric, and will play a crucial role in helping the brand prepare to phase out combustion engines by 2028.
It remains unclear whether the successor to the Grandland could be the reborn Manta, a rakish C-segment SUV that was earlier confirmed for launch by 2025; or even the next-generation Insignia, which Vauxhall earlier said would be a radically different proposition to the executive saloon that bowed out last year.
Opel has been building cars at Eisenach since 1992 and last year celebrated the production of its 3.7 millionth car. Its €130m transformation plan forms part of Stellantis’s wider €30 billion electrification strategy and follows similar initiatives at Vauxhall’s UK plants in Ellesmere Port and Luton.
“Eisenach, our most compact plant in Germany, has demonstrated a strong drive in quality improvements,” said Arnaud Deboeuf, Stellantis chief manufacturing officer.
“With this allocation of Stellantis’s new fully BEV platform, STLA Medium, [the] Eisenach plant’s highly skilled workforce will continue to improve the cost and the quality of the vehicles they produce to delight our customers.”
Vauxhall hasn’t yet confirmed whether the arrival of an electric Grandland equivalent means the current ICE car – available with a PHEV option – will be retired next year. But given that it was launched in 2017 and updated in 2021, a 2024 retirement would be logical.
