Peugeot e-3008 review

This is a very smartly furnished cockpit, with neat cloth (i3 vibes, anyone?), metallic and stitched finishes, and a big curved double screen that's mounted on a hidden arm so ambient light looms from behind it. The overall dash architecture manages to be unusual and striking, yet it's still easy to use. In many ways easier than conventional designs.

As usual for a Peugeot the steering wheel is small and you get sight of the instrument screen over the top of its rim. In smaller cars such as the 208 this annoys some people who like the wheel high, or the backrest reclined, and can't see the instruments. But this is a crossover so you'll be sitting high anyway, and nearly everyone will be fine.

Tell me more about the touchscreen.

The driver screen has the usual options: speed, various sizes of map, energy info, music, driver assist view. You toggle through the trip computer using the buttons at the ends of the stalks. The central screen does what central screens normally do: a tiled and configurable view of climate and infotainment plus controls for assisted driving and general setup.

Peugeot's killer app is something called i-Toggles, a set of icons on a third, shallow and wide screen above the console. These icons are user-choosable, so you can set shortcuts to 10 things you use a lot: additional climate settings, the surround camera, radio stations, fave people to phone, frequent navigation destinations or phone mirroring or seat heating.

How's the space?

Fine up front (that raised centre console cocoons the driver somewhat), not brilliant out back. To give adults any vague hope of comfort back there, the slightly bulky front seats need raised to give foot space beneath. Without that, it's realistically only for kids. All because this is a relatively short car by class standards. Er, if it's so short why's it so heavy? You may well ask. Moving on.

At least the boot is a good size, both in depth and height, and amounts to 520 litres (or 1,480 with the rear seats flattened). There’s a false floor for stowing cables and whatnot, but nothing under the bonnet like you get with some EVs.