DS Automobiles DS N°8 (2025 – ) Electric review

Like all electric cars, the DS N°8 should prove to be comparatively cheap to run when ranged up against combustion or hybrid powered equivalents. If you can avail of cheap domestic electricity rates then charging up the N°8 overnight shouldn’t break the bank – but bear in mind the maximum AC charging rate is 11kW, while a typical 7.4kW home wallbox will need around 10 hours to fully top-up even the smaller of two batteries offered for the DS; the larger unit will need more like 13 hours to do the same job. DC rates are much quicker, with a 160kW hook-up replenishing any N°8’s power unit from 20-80 per cent in around 27 minutes, and the pay-off is you get great range too. The basic single-motor, 74kWh model does 340 miles to a charge, but the other variants with a whopping 97.2kWh battery can do up to 466. Which should, hopefully, mean you can get to where you want to be without expensive stops at public chargers.

DS is still a relatively niche player in terms of sales, so its cars don’t often feature on reliability surveys. Having said that, parent company Citroen has certainly bucked the long-held belief French cars are unreliable, as its modern products tend to feature highly on customer satisfaction reports. So, there’s no reason to expect the DS N°8 to be problematic, especially when it has only electric drivetrains that require far less maintenance than those running on petrol or diesel. Furthermore, DS offers a three-year, unlimited-mileage warranty on all its new cars, which is decent, and its previous only all-electric effort – the DS 3 – hasn’t triggered any major owner alerts for being notably troublesome.

There is a strong array of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) on the DS N°8, but not all of it is standard equipment – the DS Drive Assist 2.0 package, for instance, which includes automatic lane change, speed adaptation and predictive adaptive cruise control, is an expensive option on the base-spec Pallas cars, although it is at least standard-fit on the grander Etoile. Similarly, driver alertness monitoring is only a cost-option on the upper-spec DS, rather than being factory fit. The N°8 hasn’t yet been assessed by independent test body Euro NCAP.

This is one of the strong points of the DS N°8. Building on the traditions of both Citroen and DS ride comfort is pillowy soft, which in combination with the smoothness and silence of electric drive makes the N°8 a lovely way to get about. The suspension isn’t perfect, not even with the clever Active Ride system on the Etoile which scans the road ahead with a camera to prepare the suspension for the bumps that lie in the vehicle’s path. Apart from a few muffled thuds when its large alloy wheels encounter bigger imperfections in the road’s surface, for most of the time the N°8 wafts along in serene, undisturbed comfort, though. It also has incredibly plush seats, top-quality cabin ambience and plenty of legroom in both passenger rows, although headroom is a touch restricted in the rear by the sloping roofline and a full-length panoramic sunroof up top.

DS goes large on the digital tech inside the N°8, quite literally in terms of the massive 16-inch touch-screen spanning the centre of the dash. This is not a bad system to look at or use, in the main, but the sheer size of it means some of the functions on the far side of the screen from the driver are nigh-on impossible to use on the move because of the distances involved in reaching for them. But a further 12.25-inch instrument cluster and sizeable head-up display above help with the intuitiveness of the N°8’s interface, while there’s lots of nice equipment featured as standard – such as a 14-speaker, 690-watt Focal 3D sound system to satisfy audiophiles. We’re not massively convinced by the X-design steering wheel in the DS, though. It’s not only odd to look at, but odd to use, as you never quite know where you want to put your hands.

The N°8 uses EV technology seen in other related products from the wider Stellantis family of which DS is a part, such as the Peugeot E-5008 [https://www.autotrader.co.uk/content/car-reviews/peugeot-e-5008-review-2024], Because its body is lower, lighter and more aerodynamic, it makes a better fist of the driving range, though. It also seems to have more power on a time-limited ‘overboost’ phase, as even the entry-level single-motor version has up to 260 horsepower and a 7.7-second 0-62mph time. Though it is more expensive, the dual-motor AWD (with up to 375 horsepower) is more befitting of a luxury vehicle such as the N°8, providing ample, easily accessible and enjoyable performance. It also just feels that bit better tied-down in the corners, thanks to its 2.3-tonne mass, and with the traction benefits of all-wheel drive, it’s markedly quicker across ground than its front-driven, single-motor stablemates.