Peugeot E-3008 SUV (2023 - ) Electric review

Surprisingly, Peugeot has priced the E-3008 on par with stuff like the Tesla Model Y and the Audi Q4 e-tron. It actually competes in many ways, but at £46,000 for a basic version – when you can buy the bigger and better Hyundai Ioniq 5 from £40,000 – it’s a strange decision. The same car with a hybrid drivetrain costs around £35k, though. There’s no sugarcoating the electric premium, and frankly, even if you disregard the list price and look at leasing or PCP rates, the leap between a petrol 3008 and an electric one is probably greater than you’ll claw back in fuel savings. As a company car, however, the E-3008 makes much more sense.

The E-3008 is very likely to prove broadly reliable, but there are a couple of things to be aware of. Firstly, the previous 3008 suffered patchy reliability – in 2023 it came near the bottom of a What Car? family SUV reliability survey. And secondly, this particular model is built on a brand-new chassis, so it’s unproven. That said, it will be shared with loads of other Stellantis Group cars in future (Jeep, Alfa Romeo, Vauxhall and Fiat), and the company has poured a fortune into developing it – including, no doubt, rectifying issues with the last chassis. Plus, as ever with an electric car, in principle it should be more reliable than something with a petrol engine because there are fewer moving parts.

Euro NCAP hasn’t tested the E-3008 yet but we’d expect it to get the same five-star score as the outgoing car. Standard safety kit is perfectly adequate and includes a couple of neat features. The automatic emergency braking system can detect pedestrians and cyclists at night, and the lane-keeping assistance system is one of the less annoying ones on the market. (It nudges the car into lane quite gently, rather than shunting the car sideways like you’ve been charged by a rhinoceros.) Unfortunately, though, quite a lot of safety stuff is left to higher trims or the options list. Adaptive cruise control with stop and go, and brighter LED headlamps, are GT-spec only. Long-range blind spot monitoring and rear cross traffic alert are on the options list.

How comfortable you’ll feel in the E-3008 will depend largely on how your frame fits into the unusual driver's seat setup. When it works it’s great, placing a small wheel low down with the instruments in the Tupac Shakur position: above the rim. It gives an idiosyncratic go-karty feel (sorry, Mini) to a bulky car, and a sense of control that’s genuinely unique. But longer-legged people might find the bottom of the wheel scraping their knees. And your hands often obscure part of the instrument panel. The way the car is setup more generally will be similarly polarising. On one hand, Peugeot has tried to differentiate its family SUV from stuff like the Nissan Qashqai and Kia Sportage by making it ‘sporty’. The steering is sharp and the ride quality is on the firm side. You might like it – the body control is excellent for a car like this – but if your main priority is outright comfort, the frequent low-speed jiggling will vex you. General refinement is excellent, though. It’s very quiet, both in wind- and road noise terms, and in the silence of mechanical bits like the wiper and window motors. It all feels like a very high-quality product.

This is one of the smaller family-sized SUVs on the market, the result of ‘coupe-like’ styling, meaning it can feel a little cramped in the back. Legroom is only average for the class, too – the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Tesla Model Y feel much bigger in the cabin, as does the (considerably cheaper) MG ZS EV. The boot is a decent size, though: at 520-litres it’s the same as you’ll find in the Hyundai. The E-3008’s cabin design makes it feel like a truly high-tech product, though, regardless of trim level. Every car gets a huge 21-inch curved display, and the material use throughout is top quality. It’s all very functional too, including the row of digital shortcut buttons under the main screen. Genuinely, there are some who will sit in the E-3008’s driving seat and immediately feel like they want one. It makes a Volkswagen ID.4’s cabin look utterly bland by comparison. Two trim levels: Allure and GT, with the former getting dual zone climate, keyless entry and start, navigation, 19-inch wheels… everything you’d want. Unless you want more safety stuff, of course. Or bigger wheels and flashier interior lighting. On which, this car has the brightest dashboard lighting we’ve ever seen. It’s spectacular, but there’s so much of it that it can be a bit distracting at night.

Two power options for the big electric Peugeot: a standard version with 210-horsepower and a 326-mile range, and a long-range version with 230-horsepower and 435 claimed miles from a full battery. Both are impressive on paper, and are quick enough on the road, but there is always a sense that the Peugeot is a big, heavy car. It doesn’t feel rapid in the same way that plenty of other similarly-priced electric cars do – notably, the Tesla Model Y. In both cases the E-3008 gets an 11kW on-board charger, which means it’ll charge quickly at workplace or supermarket charging points. And its maximum charging capacity is 160kW, so if you’re charging at a public DC rapid charging station, you won’t be there too long.