Peugeot e-2008 review: A lion with li-ion

HAVE you tried an electric car yet? If not, what’s stopping you? If I had to guess, I’d say one of the following, or maybe a combination: fear of the unknown, heart attack Certificate Of Entitlement (COE) prices, your nose is too high for a Chinese car, or general suspicion of the whole charging thing.

In some ways, Peugeot’s e-2008 is the perfect electric vehicle (EV) to chip away at those fears.

Like the model name suggests, it’s a battery-powered version of the 2008, a boxy but handsome Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) that you can also buy with a peppy, 1.2-litre turbo petrol engine, if you really want.

That would be so last century, though, because electric cars are clearly inevitable. Yet, the e-2008 is a reminder that not every one of them has to accelerate like something built for intergalactic travel and come with a wacky sci-fi interior to match.

Discreet “e” logos on the tailgate and near the wing mirrors are the biggest clues that Peugeot stripped the engine, gearbox and fuel tank from the 2008 and replaced it all with batteries and a motor for the front wheels.

The setup gives you 130 horsepower and a 50 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion pack, which is good for 345 kilometres of range on paper. For the pragmatic Singaporean, there’s an intriguing benefit: the Peugeot qualifies for the cheaper Category A COE.

Better than that, the taxman looks the other way when it comes to cars like this, so the Peugeot gets S$45,000 worth of rebates. Even though EV hardware is still expensive, the e-2008 is slightly cheaper than the petrol version of the 2008 with similar equipment.

That being so, you can forgive its lack of flash, and from the outside you’d be hard-pressed to tell the e-2008 apart from its combustion sibling. Little body-coloured elements sort of radiate out stylishly from the lion emblem on the front grille, but otherwise the Peugeot doesn’t do much to flaunt its emissions-free nature.

If the e-2008 is coy about its electric hardware on the outside, it keeps positively schtum about it inside. You do get upholstery stitching in a vibrant green, but apart from that the cabin is all but indistinguishable from that of a regular 2008. Mind you, that’s no bad thing. The Peugeot has a dashboard that looks pleasingly driver focused, one that’s novel without being wacky.

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You look over the steering wheel instead of through it, because it’s unusually small and wieldy. The driver displays are a highlight, thanks to layered screens that provide a gorgeous 3D effect. Apparently it always puts the most important info up front, to reduce reaction times if the driver needs to respond to a hazard.

Less user-friendly is the row of keys for various functions like the air-recirculation or door locks. Stylish as they are, it’s hard to figure out what button is where and why it’s there, and the touch-sensitive switches behind them are just as random, only they offer no feedback when jabbed.

Still, the salient thing about the e-2008 is that for a compact SUV, it has plenty of space inside, which suits its purpose as a family car. The seats in the back come with plenty of legroom, while the car’s batteries don’t eat into cargo space, which leaves you a good 434 litres of space.

Some cars feel a bit flawed when converted from combustion to electric power, thanks to wind noise or strange whirrs penetrating the cabin, and sometimes overly-hard suspension, but the Peugeot isn’t one of them. It does have a firm ride, but it’s beautifully quiet on the move, and the sound system is better than I’ve heard in much pricier cars. I thought it was lovely on drives home from work for those reasons alone.

The basic controls are simple enough for a three year-old to figure out, and the motor is tuned to make the e-2008 feel like a normal car in some ways. Lift off the brakes and it creeps forward, for example. Lift off the accelerator and it rolls along like a combustion car, unless you switch on the setting that adds extra regenerative braking.

Nailing the accelerator produces a seamless surge, and though the Peugeot is no rocket ship, it’s smoother, more urgent and quieter than its petrol sibling. You do have to select the Sport mode to unlock full power from the motor, and conversely, there’s an Eco mode that holds back the horses and turns down the air-con in case the next charging station is further away than you thought.

I probably dipped into the motor’s pool of torque a bit too readily, because the Peugeot predicted that I would be out of juice after just 287 km — roughly five days’ typical motoring here.

That medium range is due to a relatively small battery, but on the positive side you can top up the Peugeot in roughly an hour at a 50 kW Direct Current (DC) charger. Those are at malls everywhere now, so plug in, have a meal and you should be good to go. Or have a coffee and you’re set for a couple of days at least.

That arrangement wouldn’t work for everyone, of course, but the Peugeot is at least good enough to warrant a test drive if you’re in the market for a family car at this budget.

It’s often compared to Opel’s Mokka-e because the two brands have the same parent company and both cars share the same powertrain, but the e-2008’s larger size and longer wheelbase give it more practicality, while the smaller Mokka-e feels zippier to drive and has a smoother ride over bumps.

And yet, the e-2008’s closest rival could well be the petrol 2008. It offers such an unintimidating way to try out electric drive, so if you haven’t sampled an EV yet, test driving the Peugeot could make you wish you’d done it sooner.

Peugeot e-2008 GT Line

Electric Motor / layout Single / Front

Motor power / torque 130 hp / 260 Nm

Battery type / net capacity Lithium ion, 50 kWh

Normal Charge Type / Time 11 kW AC / 4 h

Max Fast Charge Type / Time 100 kW DC / 30 mins 10 to 80 percent

Electric Range 345 km WLTP / 353 km local spec

0-100km/h 10.1 seconds

Top Speed 150 km/h

Efficiency 14.5 kWh/100km

Agent Autofrance

Price S$78,888 without COE

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