BUY, LEASE OR FINANCE A PEUGEOT E-208 FROM OSV: bit.ly/3egJd7B
It's getting harder and harder to resist the draw of full-electric vehicles. Most of them seem to be SUVs these days but here's a Zero Emission supermini, the Peugeot e-208. It looks snappy, does 211 miles between charges, has no practicality downsides over the combustion-engined version and comes with monthly payment finance you could justify. What's not to like?
Background
In the future, all small cars will need to be developed on platforms that can support full-electric as well as conventional thermic propulsion. Surprisingly, few currently are but the Peugeot 208 is an exception. The brand wants you to pick a powertrain for this model (petrol, diesel or electric) in the same way you'd select a trim option - and it's the battery-powered variant, the e-208, that we look at here.
It shares all the same engineering we've already also seen in the PSA Group's two other small car battery-powered products, the Vauxhall Corsa-e and the DS 3 Crossback E-TENSE, a pair of designs that share this Peugeot's sophisticated CMP ('Common Modular Platform'). And those same underpinnings allow for a new generation of 'big car'-style camera safety systems. It all sounds promising: let's take a look.
Driving Experience
Here, as with this model's cousin the Vauxhall Corsa-e, a 50kWh lithium-ion battery is mated to a 100kW electric motor putting out 136bhp and working through the usual single-speed auto transmission you get with EVs. Like all electric vehicles, this one develops all of its torque at once (there's 260Nm of it) and this car simply hurls itself away from rest (it takes just a couple of seconds to crest the 30mph mark and 62mph is reached in only 8.1s), disguising the fact that (also like all EVs) this Zero Emissions variant has a bit of a weight problem - that drivetrain adds over 300kgs of bulk. That other small battery-powered little hatches manage this issue a little better is evidenced by the fact that the e-208's WLTP-rated 211 mile driving range is easily improved upon by the latest versions of the Renault ZOE and the BMW i3.
Still, all of this does represent a brave new world for forward-thinking supermini buyers looking to make the (still rather expensive) switch into all-electric motoring; it seems like only yesterday, after all, that a fully-charged small EV could only manage around half the kind of range you get from this one. Of course, you certainly won't achieve anything like that kind of operating capability if you get anywhere near this EV's quoted 93mph top speed. Or if you habitually drive your e-208 in the 'Sport' setting that'll be necessary to release to full 136bhp power output just mentioned. The quoted range figure will only be distantly possible if you instead engage a somewhat restrictive 'Eco' mode that drops power output right down to 83bhp. That's the setting you'll use in an e-208 around town, an environment in which it makes a strange polyphonic sound at low speeds to warn unwary pedestrians of its impending approach. Above 18mph, all you can hear is a bit of tyre roar from the eco-moulded Michelin rubber.
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