Peugeot 208 E

I usually don’t try to judge people on a certain behaviour or attitude towards some things. Reality is, I do and you do too. And even though we judge them, we still tolerate a lot of stuff because we don’t want to be rude. But, there are exceptions. One of these are people who use their zodiac sign as an excuse for being the way they are, and the other insufferable oaks are petrolheads who just hate electric cars “cuz it ain’t a V8”.

Hundreds of scientist are constantly telling us that climate change is the number one threat the world is facing right now and that driving around in petrol powered cars isn’t really doing the world a favour. I too am unneccessarily polluting the atmosphere because I fancy a drive from time to time. But in my eyes, that’s not the major problem. The major problem lies in the massive amount of cars on the road that have to carry people, IKEA furniture and other things around. Those regular and boring everyday tasks are a waste of precious fuel. Fuel that could be used for a good old sunday drive.

Thanks to some South African in California, people started to realize that electricity could also be used for things other than running a TV. With Tesla taking the first step towards making EV’s available to the general public and showing to the word that you can get further than 10 miles, other car manufacturers followed as soon as they realized that a lot of money could be made in that department. Sadly most of the established brands lag behind by miles (pun intended) and it doesn’t seem like they’re catching up anytime soon.

But what should you do when you can’t catch up? Just try it in another segment! Which is what Peugeot did with their 208 E. It’s their first fully electric car and apparently it’s jolly good as the 208 was named car of the year in its segment. With me looking forward to an electric future and loving the design of the new Peugeot range, I was eager to get behind the wheel of the new 208 E.

So there I was. Picking up the fully electric 208 from the dealer and admiring its design in the showroom. It’s a fabulous looking car from every angle. The rear lights with the black section give it a very sporty look and the huge front grille makes it look punchy without looking pretentious. But there’s one thing I don’t like on the 208’s design, or on any modern Peugeot in fact. Those huge vertical light strips on the front. I don’t know. I’m just not a huge fan of it and knowing that it would look better without it sort of drives me mad. But enough about the outside. Where the car really shines is the inside. You are greeted by a very futuristic dashboard with beautifully designed buttons and a phenomenal speedometer. Together with the sort of squared steering wheel is makes you feel like you’re sat in some sort of concept car. Hat’s off to Peugeot for doing a bold design and not sticking to the same old boring stuff everyone else is doing.

But let’s get to the driving. Once you start the car, which happens completely silently, the virtual cockpit reveals the next feature which is some next level hologram stuff. Seriously cool! I put the car in gear and pulled out the dealership in complete silence. What followed was a relaxed one hour cruise home. The car I got was the top spec GT-Line one with all the options boxed ticked. So I got adaptive cruise control with lane assist which meant that I didn’t have to do anything. What I did was look at the range and being slightly stressed out by the rapid decrease. The car will do 320km in the best conditions. On the motorway it will do significantly less, which is why the drive wasn’t as relaxing as I hoped it would be. Not that I would have run out of juice anytime soon, but the numbers sort of didn’t really add up.

Once arrived in Basel, I drove straight to work and noticed that the range was actually increasing again. Thanks to city driving and regenerative braking, the car will gain some range and decrease the average “juice” consumption. Around town the car is phenomenal. Great visibility, very nimble and always ready to exploit a gap. The availability of instant torque is so much fun and it just turns you into a city hooligan because you know that you’d smoke anyone from 30-50km/h. It even makes more fun taking the more congested route as you don’t feel guilty when being stationary, because you aren’t producing any CO2 while doing so. Once at home, I plugged it into the standard socket and charged the car overnight. Now on the standard plug, charging the 208 will take quite some time, but if you’re only going to work in it and charge it every night, it’s perfectly fine. Nonetheless I wanted to find out how fast it would charge on some big juice-station. To do so I drained about half the batteries and went for dinner with some friends while I charged the car on a nearby charging port. About 1.5 hours later, the batteries were completely charged and we were ready to go again.

So all in all I absolutely adored the car. But, there were a few minor things I didn’t really like. First off was its bluetooth capabilities. Even though the car instantly connected to my phone, it always thought that I wanted to listen to the radio first. Moreover the steering feels like it’s connected to a dead fish when going very slow and the cruise control stalk is way too close to the indicator stalk. The steering wheel further has an odd shape which I really love, but when going around turns it can get quite confusing with knowing where up and down is. Moreover the infotainment system is controlled via touchscreen only which is a bit of a faff sometimes. But other than those minor niggles, I absolutely loved my time with the car.

I did plan on taking some decent pictures of the car on the weekend, as work didn’t allow otherwise. Sadly it’s 2020 and the good old virus has somehow gotten a hold of me. My time with the 208 E was curt short and I wan’t really able to do everything I planned on doing. Nonetheless, I had enough time to get a feel for the car and the future, because if its going to be like that I’m looking forward to it!

Images by Peugeot.