•Robust superhydrophobic coating was prepared by the electrophoretic deposition.•The coating exhibits outstanding mechanical durability.•The prepared superhydrophobic coating shows superior anti-corrosion performance.•Self-healing performance was obtained after inhibitor incorporation. The practical application of superhydrophobic surfaces in corrosion protection often suffers from complicated fabrication processes, requirement for high-cost fluorosilane modification and poor mechanical durability. In order to address above mentioned drawbacks, in this work, robust protective superhydrophobic SiO2 coatings are fabricated on electrically conductive metal surfaces by a single one-step electrophoretic deposition (EPD) technique from EPD bath containing superhydrophobic SiO2 nanoparticles (SH-SiO2 NPs) and resin-based adhesive. The as-prepared superhydrophobic coatings exhibit good anti-corrosion performance in 3.5 wt.% NaCl solution. Furthermore, additional corrosion inhibition is achieved after incorporation of inhibitors into the above superhydrophobic coatings by deposition of inhibitor-loaded SH-SiO2 NPs.