Peugeot E-208 Review

Motors and performance

Driving to get some milk on a Sunday morning and fancy a bit of fun on the deserted roads? Select the Sport mode and the E-208 will give you the full benefit of its 154bhp, but less range. That won’t be a be a problem if you know you’re just going a few miles. In this setting the car really does feel quite fast. You expect it when you pull away from a standstill in an electric car, but the E-208 pulls well all the way up to motorway speeds too. That’s useful for overtaking tractors on country lanes or pulling onto a motorway and quickly getting up to the same speed as the other traffic.

If you don’t need all the power and want to preserve some battery there’s a ‘Normal’ mode which gives less power and has an emphasis on comfort for everyday driving, but still feels fast enough even when you’re merging into motorway traffic.

And if you want to squeeze the last mile out of the range, there’s ‘Eco’ which cuts the power even more and extends the range, but also means that the heating gets turned down – which can be really annoying in colder weather, as you can't have the more efficient powertrain settings without also having a chilly cabin.

Drive and handling

Any Peugeot wearing the ‘GT’ badge should feel sporty, or there might be crowds of car-geek protesters waving placards outside Head Office. They needn’t worry, as the E-208 feels like a little performance car. The tiny steering wheel needs only small inputs to make the car change direction and you can feel if the tyres are going to lose grip by the feedback through the steering.

It’s not perfect though. The suspension is a bit firm on bumpy roads, which is a trade-off for that sporty handling. On the bigger wheels and tyres there’s a fair bit of road noise too, although by any small car standards, the E-208 feels very grown-up and is composed and easy-going enough to make light work of long journeys.  

As with all electric cars, the E-208’s motor becomes a generator and puts power back into the battery when you lift your foot off the accelerator, courtesy of a system called regenerative braking. You can choose modes here too, with a ‘normal’ level, which is just like slowing using traditional engine braking, or ‘Increased’ which you’ll notice more as the car brakes fairly heavily as you ease off the accelerator. It’s easy to get used to, but it’s nowhere near as strong as the ‘one-pedal’ mode that you get in alternatives like the Nissan Leaf and BMW i3.