Peugeot's made a very pretty 450bhp EV sports car

Peugeot’s been on a design mean-streak lately. Even its SUVs looks quite good. Nevertheless, we weren’t quite ready for this. It’s the e-Legend Concept, and it’s basically a French rebirth of the aborted Nissan IDx concept. Swoon.

Of course, this one has ‘Concept’ in its name too, but apparently its styling is a glimpse into Peugeot’s future. A thoroughly authentic glimpse into a not-too-distant future, we’re hoping.

The tech doesn’t quite back up our dream of a quick turnaround to production, though, as the e-Legend packs the full gamut of future buzzwords. Electric? Tick! Autonomous? Tick! Connected? Tick!

We’ll start with the electric powertrain, which is rather exciting, and appears to have no downsides. Power and torque are rated at 450bhp and 590lb ft, enough for a 4.0sec 0-62mph time. It’s safe to say that’d make it Peugeot’s quickest, most powerful road car. There’s four-wheel drive, so it should put all that power to good use, too.

Despite how juicy those numbers are, it’ll apparently cover 370 miles on a full charge. And that’s on the new, more real-world ‘WLTP’ test. Even more staggeringly, you can extract around 300 miles from 25 minutes on a fast charger.

Now, the autonomy. Peugeot’s happily told us that driving is still important – no point having all that power and leaving it for the computer brain to enjoy – and thus the e-Legend comes with four driving modes, two of which involve actual driving.

‘Legend’ is a cruising mode, and Peugeot uses it as an excuse to hark back to the pretty Peugeot 504 Coupe that’s inspired the e-Legend’s looks, supplemented by a wooden steering wheel and blue velour seats.

‘Boost’ does what it says on the selection screen and brings all of that 450bhp to life, though we’ve no idea how much of it can go to the rear axle. Perhaps we’re the only ones childish enough to care.

The autonomous modes are ‘Soft’, which is focused on relaxation, and ‘Sharp’, which brings all your social media hecticness onto the 49-inch screen inside, so that lovely time away from it all in a car simply becomes another portion of your day glued to the internet.

“How the heck have they fit a 49-inch screen on the dashboard?” is a question you’re no doubt clamouring to ask, and it appears to be a very wiiide screen, curving round beneath the windscreen. When you’re not driving, the steering wheel retracts away so as not to block any of it from view.

And when you’re driving? There’ll be “180-degree immersion for the driver, with projection of the road” upon it. So it appears you’ll actually see more of the road than in a traditional, windscreen-only car. Whether you actually need to is another argument; it’s not something we’ve been dying for carmakers to fix.

A car of two halves, then. We’re personally smitten with the looks and excited by the powertrain, but lodged on the fence about all the complicated tech apparently getting in the way of just enjoying the thing. It’s a concept, though, so not all of it may make production.

Do you agree? Which bits would you like to see on your next Peugeot?