Peugeot E-208 Review

Practicality and Boot Space

The remarkable thing about the E-208 is actually how unremarkable it is. Sit inside and it has exactly the same space, comfort and boot capacity as the petrol and diesel versions. It’s not big or small for the class – it sits right in the middle and is exactly as you would expect for a car of this size.

That means the boot, with a measured size of 309 litres is about half-way between the smaller Volkswagen e-UP!’s 251 litres and the bigger Nissan Leaf’s 405 litres. There’s no froot/frunk (front boot) like in some electric cars though, as all of the under-bonnet space is taken up with motors and other hardware. It’s a shame there’s no space under the boot floor to hide charging cables either, nor any space under the bonnet of the car – like you get with the BMW i3.

In terms of passengers, the E-208 is pretty much as you’d expect. It’s a five door, so school run pick-ups will be easy and all but the lankiest teenagers will be able to cram themselves in the back and be comfortable.

Technology

It might be a humble hatchback, but even the cheapest e208 is surprisingly advanced. Anyone who’s trading in a five-year-old car could be in for a bit of a shock. For a start, there’s a screen where you’d normally find old-fashioned dials and on all of the models expect the cheapest ‘Active’, some vital info is projected onto the base of the windscreen to give a head-up display. 

A 7 or 10-inch touchscreen sits in the centre of the dashboard – Peugeot calls it a ‘virtual cockpit’. It means you can keep an eye on all the of car’s vital signs and use the TomTom branded navigation. You don’t need to get into the car to play with the tech though; charging can be controlled by an app on your smartphone, which also lets you preheat and defrost the car while you are still in bed on a cold morning. 

If you don’t mind having a bit of friendly advice about your style of driving, the app a will also give you hints and tips to help you make the most efficient use of the power in your battery. 

When you need to top up the battery on your phone, there’s a wireless charging pad. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity are standard too.

Interior and Design

This is a real selling point for the E-208, as it gets a really classy finish and variety of materials, with leatherette and Alcantara upholstery – complete with brightly coloured contrast stitching - as standard for the high-spec ‘GT’ trim level that the E-208 comes in. Some people might not like the liberal use of black gloss plastics, as they get a bit smeary with fingerprints very easily, but overall the E-208 has one of the smartest-looking interiors of any small electric car. 

Dashboard

The E-208’s dashboard is seriously funky, and the first thing you notice as you slide in is the fancy driver’s readout behind the steering wheel. This digital display can be viewed in a 3D mode, which makes the speed readout stand out from the rest of the information on the screen, or you can have it in a more conventional layout if you find that all a bit too weird. The big 10-inch touchscreen dominates the rest of the interior (more on that in our Technology and Equipment section), but there is also a row of protruding shortcut buttons that offer some climate control functions. Annoyingly, they don’t include temperature control, so if you want to make the cabin hotter or cooler then you have to resort to the voice control or to prodding through the touchscreen.  

Technology and Equipment

It might be a humble hatchback, but the E-208 is surprisingly advanced. A 10-inch touchscreen sits in the centre of the dashboard – Peugeot calls it a ‘virtual cockpit’. It means you can keep an eye on all the of car’s vital signs and use the TomTom branded navigation, and it’s very configurable as you can change the home page shortcuts to whatever you want. You don’t need to get into the car to play with the tech though; charging can be controlled by an app on your smartphone, which also lets you preheat and defrost the car while you are still in bed on a cold morning. 

If you don’t mind having a bit of friendly advice about your style of driving, the app a will also give you hints and tips to help you make the most efficient use of the power in your battery. 

When you need to top up the battery on your phone, there’s a wireless charging pad. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity are standard too. 

Safety

The independent crash testing organisation EuroNCAP checked out a petrol version of the new 208 and gave it a four-star rating (out of five). This looks a little disappointing compared to some rivals, but the Peugeot actually got very good scores for its protection of adults (front) and children (in the rear) but was stripped of a star because some of the accident-prevention technology isn’t standard on lower-end models in the range. The E-208 is only available in top-spec GT that comes with all of the safety bells-and-whistles, including lane-keep assist, autonomous braking if the car senses an imminent collision with a pedestrian or vehicle, adaptive cruise control, blind spot warning and more. So while some other 208s only get four stars, it’s fair to assume that the E-208 is just as safe as five-star rated rivals like the MG4.