PEUGEOT E-3008 GT review: ‘A bit like motoring from the comfort of your own lounge’

The surgeon looked down at my partner. “The good news, Tom, is that you don’t really need an appendix. Give it a few hundred years of evolution and we’ll be born without one, so in an hour or so you’ll be ahead of the curve.” A cheery and reassuring way, mostly, of brushing off what turned out to be routine surgery, even if it landed on stony ground with our worried faces looking back at him. It wasn’t so much appendicitis that was the issue, then, as being born too early.

Evolution, elsewhere, is happening more quickly. Ahead of much of the automotive world’s move from combustion engines to electric propulsion somewhere between 2030 and 2035 — depending on government and rate of intent — car makers have been cracking on with battery development at a rate of knots. Or watts. And whereas first-generation electric cars for mainstream were struggling for a range beyond 150 miles even five years ago, now (here) PEUGEOT‘s new mid-sized E-3008 SUV is offering a reassuring 324 miles on a single charge from the get-go. With a long-range model to come that will offer 422 miles.

Either of which go straight to the heart of the single biggest objection among consumers facing the prospect of EV switchover to date. Range anxiety is real, and nobody wants to get stranded for want of somewhere to plug in. But north of 300 miles, let alone 400 miles, is more than enough for most regular motoring needs, and with that ticked off we can revert simply to marking the card of the E-3008’s proposition as a car and daily transport. And therein lies a string of good-news bulletins for its maker.

Ground-up EV design

Firstly, this is a ground-up EV design (though a petrol-hybrid is available, too), so proportions and architecture can start over. That means a clean-surfaced, upright silhouette, but with fastback overtones closer to a coupé in roofline. It’s a good-looking thing, the 3008, for all its practicality, sporty almost, and PEUGEOT‘s characteristic ‘slash’ lighting front and rear (to mimic the claw marks of the marque’s lion symbol) adds welcome visual drama.

The real treat is the interior, though. It’s a bit unusual to be getting excited by a car from the inside out, granted, but there’s a genuine point of difference in what PEUGEOT calls its i-Cockpit. It starts with a panoramic, floating 21-inch HD screen that combines dash layout, head-up display and a touchscreen. It’s an impressive centre-point, mounted ahead of a luminescent panel with LED lighting (choose from eight colours) that runs the width of the car, set above a compact steering wheel that’s square-edged top and bottom.

Coupled with a centre console that wraps around driver and front passenger, enrobed in warm, soft-touch, high-quality materials, it feels a bit like motoring from the comfort of your own lounge, or being sat in a premium airline cabin. Which, with (hybrid) prices starting from a bit less than £35k, is quite the trick to pull off.

Accomplished on the road

The PEUGEOT E-3008 is accomplished on road, too. It feels right-sized, for a start, with a comfortable, commanding driving position and — given the torque of the electric powerplant — fair leaps from the line. It’s as quiet as it’s quick to get away, the steering is meaty and responsive without being over-light and — via paddles behind the wheel — you can set a choice of three levels of regenerative braking that recharge the battery when decelerating. Set to the highest level, the attentive driver can utilise ‘one-pedal driving’, whereby simply lifting off the power in good time will be all the retardation you need, rather than braking continuously. It adds to the sense of serenity in progress.

And there’s the rub. It’s all so easy — to charge, to keep charged, to use, to drive, to be in, to live with — and we got here in short years, after a century of burning fossil fuels. The E-3008 tells us that, like the electronic age that brought us ever-evolving phones, TVs, tablets and laptops, the car in forward-thinking hands could be about to enter an age of hyper-evolution. If you’ve blinked, you’ve missed the leap to V10.0 already. But for the moment, advantage PEUGEOT.