Citroen e-SpaceTourer - long-term review

What better way to send off the Citroen e-SpaceTourer than with a big European road trip? If you’re a fan of visiting French motorway service stations – and who isn’t? – quite literally nothing!

Yep, we loaded up the big e-bus and headed to the Alps. And the big e-bus proved, for the most part, a fine companion for a proper family adventure. Practicality? Unparalleled. Sure, ventilated massage seats and quilted dolphin-leather upholstery might be nice, but true luxury – at least if you have a couple of kids who insist on travelling with a Halfords-worth of bikes and scooters – is near-limitless space.

And, out in the mountains, the e-SpaceTourer nailed the brief. It transported several chests of drawers without issue, because that’s the sort of thing you do on a regular family road trip. Following a freak blizzard, it proved a surprisingly effective snowplough.

I’d wondered if the single 134bhp electric motor had the shove to haul the chunky Citroen up the steepest mountain passes, but it managed without issue. Overall efficiency was surprisingly healthy, the regenerative braking harvesting plenty of juice on the downhill stretches. Quiet, fuss-free electric propulsion fits this big bus – and the big mountains – rather nicely.

OK, so it did suffer one teeny techy glitch: without warning, all the cabin screens decided to die, thus rendering it impossible to know how fast the Citroen was going, or how much charge it had left. Not ideal when you’re a thousand kilometres from home. The issue persisted for a couple of days, but was eventually fixed by disconnecting and reconnecting the 12-volt battery. If you’re planning a big road trip in your e-SpaceTourer, maybe pack a 10mm spanner?

For the most part, though, for road-tripping around the mountains, the e-SpaceTourer was entirely pleasant. The only challenge… was getting to the mountains. Which, if you and your e-SpaceTourer are starting in the UK, is an involved process.

On the autoroute, the Citroen can manage around 130 miles on a full charge. But, of course, that doesn’t mean 130 miles between stops: charge speeds tail off brutally after 80 per cent, meaning you’ll be waiting a long time if you want to get fully brimmed.

We settled on charging up to around 85 per cent, a process that took 50 minutes or so on 150kW public fast-chargers. With a tiny contingency buffer, 85 per cent charge gets you about 100 miles in an e-SpaceTourer. France is big. We stopped a lot.

Charging on the French autoroute proved, in short, a bit of a pain. Several times we found ourselves waiting 45 minutes or more for a free charger, too low on battery to push on to another quieter services. Then, once eventually plugged in, there was the joy of navigating the specifically glitchy app of that specific charge provider. France seems some way behind the UK when it comes to adopting straightforward contactless payment for charging. Sort it out, world!

Believe me, I’d love a long-term review of an EV not to be a long-term review of public charging infrastructure. But until public charging stops being an unnecessary pain, it’s gonna keep happening, sorry.

Was it intolerable? No. Was it a whole lot less convenient than petrol or diesel road-tripping? Yes. You might argue that, if you’re regularly planning on driving 700 miles in a single day, a big EV bus probably isn’t the vehicle for you. But even those of us who don’t regularly drive 700 miles in a day might occasionally need to do so, right?

Limited grand touring ability aside, should you consider the e-SpaceTourer for your next family MPV? Tricky one. Yes, family practicality is predictably awesome, and yes, e-power matches its unfussy, relaxed demeanour nicely.

But at the same time, it doesn’t feel the most… invested EV effort. Android Auto works well enough, but beyond that, the infotainment system doesn’t offer much insight into your electric motoring habits. Despite many, many efforts, I fail to make the Citroen app function. (Judging from the chat on Citroen forums, this is not an unusual experience.)

The e-SpaceTourer feels like what it is: a diesel van adapted for electric, rather than a bespoke EV bus such as the ID Buzz.

Pet peeve? The fact that, every time you brim the e-SpaceTourer, its range readout unfailingly resets to 217 miles. I have never come close to achieving 217 miles on a charge. I do not believe any human has. But still it confidently asserts it every time, refusing to recalibrate its optimism in the face of reality.

And the reality is, an EV of this size (and aerodynamic inefficiency) still involves significant compromise. I’d love electric to be a viable option for long-distance MPVs. But for that, we need power-denser batteries and more reliable, convenient fast-charging. They’re both coming, but couldn’t they come a little sooner?