Performance

Driving to get some milk on a Sunday morning and fancy a bit of fun on the deserted roads? Select the Sport mode and the e208 will give you the full benefit of its 135 bhp, but less range. That won’t be a be a problem if you know you’re just going a few miles. In this setting the car really does feel quite fast. You expect it when you pull away from a standstill in an electric car, but the e208 pulls well all the way up to motorway speeds too. That’s useful for overtaking tractors on country lanes or pulling onto a motorway and quickly getting up to the same speed as the other traffic.

If you don’t need all the power and want to preserve some battery there’s a ‘Normal’ mode which gives 100bhp and has an emphasis on comfort for everyday driving.

And if you want to squeeze the last mile out of the range, there’s ‘Eco’ which cuts the power to 81bhp and extends the range.

Drive

Any Peugeot wearing the badge ‘GT’ should feel sporty, or there might be crowds of car-geek protesters waving placards outside Head Office. They needn’t worry, as the e208 feels like a little performance car. The tiny steering wheel needs only small inputs to make the car change direction and you can feel if the tyres are going to lose grip by the feedback through the steering.

It’s not perfect though. The early impressions we’ve had are that the suspension feels a bit firm on bumpy roads, which is a trade-off for that sporty handling. On the bigger wheels and tyres there’s a fair bit of road noise too. It might feel better on the smaller wheels used on the cheaper e208 models, but we haven’t been able to try it yet.

As with most electric cars, the e208’s motor becomes a generator and puts power back into the battery when you lift your foot off the accelerator. You can choose modes here too, with a ‘normal’ level, which is just like slowing using a traditional engine, or ‘Increased’ which is more like squeezing the brake pedal. It recovers power and means you don’t need to touch the brakes except in emergencies. It’s similar to the e-pedal used in the Nissan Leaf and BMW i3.