Petrol favourites that have gone electric (and what you actually gain)

Four of Britain’s best-loved superminis and small SUVs now come in electric form: the MINI Cooper, Peugeot e-208, Hyundai Kona and Vauxhall Corsa. Same familiar names, but the electric versions do things their petrol siblings simply can’t. 

You already know these cars. You’ve sat behind a Vauxhall Corsa at the lights, watched a MINI Cooper nip through a tight gap, seen a Peugeot 208 on every other driveway. They’re the everyday staples of British roads.

What you might not know is how much changes when they go electric. It’s not only the missing exhaust pipe and emissions. The electric versions quietly gain a pile of features the petrol models don’t offer. So let’s go through all four and see what you get.

The petrol MINI has always been fun to chuck around. The electric one keeps that famous go-kart feel, and adds a jolt of get-up-and-go you don’t get from a petrol engine. 

Because there’s an electric motor rather than an engine, and no gears to go through, power arrives the instant you press the pedal. MINI describes it as “instant torque the moment you tap the pedal” with seamless acceleration. It’s the kind of nippiness that makes town driving genuinely enjoyable. 

You also get adjustable energy recovery, MINI’s version of regenerative braking. Lift off the pedal and the car slows itself while topping the battery back up, so you’re barely touching the brakes in stop-start traffic. And through the MINI App you can set your charging to start when you want. Handy for lining it up with cheaper overnight electricity. None of that exists with the petrol MINI Cooper.

As you’d expect from MINI, fun is at its core. From the exterior design to how you can customise your drive. Choose from seven ‘MINI Experience’ modes on the MINI Cooper Electric, which affect everything from the ambient lighting to the synthesised noises that the motor makes. Three of the experience modes (Core, Green and Go-Kart) also affect the steering weight and throttle response. 

The Peugeot 208 is one of the UK’s most popular small cars, and the Peugeot e-208 is the same handsome supermini with an electric heart.

The big everyday win is climate control you run from your phone. Peugeot’s e-Remote Control lets you pre-heat or pre-cool the cabin before you leave. Do it while the car’s plugged in and it’ll use energy from the charging source rather than the battery, so you climb into a toasty (or cool) car without eating into your range. You can also start, stop or programme a charge from the same app, which no petrol 208 could ever do. 

On the road there’s a brake mode that charges the battery during deceleration, three driving modes (Eco, Normal, Sport) to suit the trip, and a heat pump that helps protect your range in the cold. Inside, the 3D i-Cockpit gives you a configurable digital display and a 10-inch touchscreen. The Peugeot e-208 is a definite step up from the petrol car it’s based on.

The petrol Hyundai Kona is a sensible small SUV. The Kona Electric is its show-off sibling, because it does two clever things the others don’t.

First, one-pedal driving. Hyundai’s i-Pedal mode lets you speed up and slow right down to a stop using only the accelerator, and you can dial the regenerative braking up or down with paddles on the steering wheel. Once you’ve tried it in traffic, it’s hard to go back.

Second, and this is the party trick: Vehicle-to-Load, or V2L. You can power any device or charge electrical equipment up to 3.6 kW from the car, using a 230V socket inside or the exterior charging port. That’s enough to run camping gear, a laptop, e-bikes, even a portable heater. Your petrol Kona can’t power a kettle in a field. This one can.

On top of that, Bluelink lets you preheat your vehicle in winter or cool it down before a summer drive from your phone. And the numbers are strong too: 0 to 62mph in 7.8 seconds and up to 240 miles of range on the long-range battery.

The Corsa has been a fixture on UK driveways for years, so plenty of people are eyeing up the electric one. Good news: it brings the same modern kit as its pricier rivals.

Through the myVauxhall app you get cabin preconditioning and scheduled charging, so you can warm or cool the car before you set off and line up charging for when electricity is cheapest. Inside you’ll find a Pure Panel display, a touchscreen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and a wireless charging pad on higher trims. All things the petrol Corsa goes without.

Here’s how the electric versions of these four favourites stack up on the features that matter most day to day. 

They’re all cracking in their own way. The MINI Cooper Electric is the fun one, the Peugeot e-208 the stylish all-rounder, the Hyundai Kona the practical clever-clogs with V2L, and the Vauxhall Corsa Electric the sensible bestseller. What they share is the comfort and convenience tricks a petrol engine was never built to do.

If one of them has caught your eye, leasing with Octopus EV is an easy way in. There’s no big lump sum upfront, just a fixed monthly cost, so you can drive one of these EVs during its best years and hand it back at the end rather than worrying about resale or what the battery’s worth in a decade. Servicing is wrapped into a predictable monthly figure, which takes the guesswork out of running an EV if it’s your first.