Citroen e-Berlingo review

The interior of the e-Berlingo is as cavernous as you would expect. It’s the little things, like the fact that it’s so wide you can fit your backpack between the two front seats.

There’s acres of headroom for all shapes and sizes and those front two seats are wide and comfortable. It’s a fairly straightforward layout: a steering wheel right in front of you (handy), a 10in digital instrument panel behind it and an 8/10in (spec dependent) touchscreen hoisted atop the centre part of the dash.

All the functionality – such as it is, this isn’t the most technology loaded car on the market – is adjusted via the central touchscreen, but there are a few buttons to adjust things like the air temperature and fan speed, sandwiched between the vents and the gear shift selector.

Citroen has also addressed our previous complaint about the USB socket, which used to sit at the bottom of the screen resulting in a wire trailing down to your phone in the small mobile-sized cubby behind the drive selector, by shifting these (you now get two) alongside the drive selector. Much better.

Does it feel cheap inside?

It’s not an inspiring interior by any stretch, even if it has been improved slightly by the facelift. But – as Citroen has pointed out repeatedly – it does offer exactly the functionality you need.

It remains a sea of plastic, but hard-wearing plastic that’ll survive most nuclear blasts and is thus adequately built for dealing with kids. Citroen has worked hard to disguise the cheapness of the materials, with some interesting colours, shapes and textures about the place.

What about rear space? 

All the rear seats are individual ones, with a flat floor across the second row. It makes for a decent amount of space for rear passengers. Everyone should be fairly happy back here. If you’ve got the seven-seat XL version, those two back seats are just about possible for adult-sized people, but they won't thank you for the opportunity to sit there for a lengthy roadtrip.

Bootspace with seats six and seven up stands at 209 litres in the XL car, but rises to a whopping 3,500 litres with everything folded down. The M offers an equally impressive 775 litres that expands to 3,000 with the seats down. Cavernous.

But that’s not all: there’s also a grand total of 27 stowage compartments spread around the cabin, with a total volume of up to 186 litres.