Citroen e-SpaceTourer - long-term review

All aboard the big green bus! A Citroen e-SpaceTourer has wafted its battery-powered way onto the Top Gear fleet, and I am all sorts of here for it.

Yes, Top Gear loves growly supercars and fizzy lightweights, but you know what else Top Gear loves? Big, practical, get-the-job-done MPVs, and they don’t come much bigger or more practical than the e-SpaceTourer. At least, that’s the hope.

Sure, it’s based on Citroen’s Dispatch van, but I’ve never understood the snootiness towards van-based MPVs. Vans are great! They’re spacious! They’re functional! They seat you high enough to spy over people’s garden fences as you drive! What’s not to like about vans?

Especially because, as vans go – or rather as van-derived MPVs go – this is a smart one. We’ve gone for a regular ‘M’ sized e-SpaceTourer (for an additional £700 or so, you can upgrade to XL, which adds an extra 35cm of length out back, and renders pretty much every parallel parking space in Britain off limits) in top-spec ‘Max’ trim. On the outside, this brings such luxuries as a body-coloured front bumper, smart 17in alloys and LED running lights, all of which help make the e-SpaceTourer look more premium than your traditional van-with-windows.

Behind the electronically operated sliding rear doors (standard with Max) lurks… business class. You can have your e-SpaceTourer with seating for as many as nine, but we’ve gone for the six-seat configuration (a £740 option). That means two ‘individual VIP armchairs’ in rows two and three, all of which slide fore and aft on longitudinal floor runners, or can be removed completely if you’ve got, say, a full-grown black rhino to transport to the tip. It’s a seating configuration that also brings a sliding central tray table, a feature I loved in TGG’s Volkswagen Multivan from a couple of years back.

So on board the e-SpaceTourer feels, on first impressions, a whole lot more upmarket and smart-car-like than its vannish origins might suggest. The cost, too, is suitably upmarket and un-vannish. The e-SpaceTourer range starts at £38,000, but our posher version tips the scales at just under £57,000. Which is a lot of cash for a Citroen MPV, but also quite good value on a pounds-per-cubic-metre basis. The e-SpaceTourer is packing a lot of cubic metres.

But how much range is it packing? That’s the crucial question. The original e-SpaceTourer, launched in 2020, proved tough to recommend on account of its piddling 50kWh battery, which offered an official range of just 136 miles, and a real-world range of ‘oh god where’s the nearest charger’. In a vehicle that begs to be brimmed with people and adventure-stuff, then driven to the other side of the country, this proved an issue.

But this facelifted e-SpaceTourer gets the option of a 75kWh battery – 50 per cent bigger than before – increasing official distance between recharges to 217 miles. We have very much opted for that £5,500 option.

But, heading into a British winter, is even 75kWh enough? Between the e-Spacetourer’s bluff front end and my kids’ stubborn desire not to endure sub-zero cabin temperatures on road trips, I’d hazard a guess that consumption could be closer to 2mpkWh rather than 3mpkWh, meaning a real-world range of 150 miles or less. As a driveway-less pleb forced to rely on public charging, that could be a pain.

Will the e-SpaceTourer’s sheer size prove a bridge too far for electric, or will the e-van turn us into… e-van-gelists? Roll on the big green experiment.