| First Drive | Durham, England | Peugeot iOn electric car |
We all want to ditch the petrol station, let's be honest. It's getting all too expensive there. What we don't want, though, is to be stranded on the hard shoulder wrapped in a tin foil coat at midnight like some tragic and moribund jacket potato. It's a moribund electric car battery that could do just that to us. The fear of it is called 'range anxiety'.
Peugeot's i0n electric supermini will do around 80 miles on a full charge. That range doesn't seem quite enough to stop the feeling of anxiousness. Yet Peugeot still thinks this car will prove the beginning of internal combustion's slow death. Here's why...
In the Metal
It looks exactly like a
Mitsubishi i-MiEV. That's because the two companies worked together in this project, using the Mitsubishi i as the base car. Citroen has a version too, called the C-Zero.
It's packaged quite well, with the only discernible compromise being boot space. The trunk is not useless, but its floor is really high. Cutting edge early adopter mummies (of electric cars, that is) will struggle to fit their Bugaboos and Quinnys in there.
But the cabin is as spacious as could be hoped for, in that it will seat four adults inside its tall, bug-eyed shell. The plastics are straight out of Mitsubishi's Japanese high lustre parts bin though - all shiny, cheap looking and monochrome. It's not offensive, but the Fiesta-owning soft touch brigade will feel time-warped back to early '90s Japan in there.
What you get for your Money
Your £35,000-40,000 buys a car that accelerates
sans traditional fuel. Granted (literally), the Government will probably slip you £5,000 towards the cost, but it's still the price of a
Porsche Cayman. And that's for what is, all electrons and neutrons aside, a very average and slightly silly looking supermini with a small boot.
Peugeot has predicted that much price-based spluttering will happen when it eventually confirms the price (
as with the i-MiEV) and decided it will stay quiet about it. What it will do instead, like MINI with its electric trials, is deflect buyers to an all-encompassing monthly price that covers the car itself, the maintenance, the insurance... everything bar the electricity, basically. What that will be is unclear, because Peugeot it still working it out, but it's set to be 'comparable' to the monthly running cost of a regular supermini, all in. The
MINI E costs £330, as a benchmark.
Driving it
You know, there's still something highly odd, but distinctly enjoyable, about turning the 'ignition' in an electric car and having to ask out loud if it's actually switched on. In every way the i0n drives like a mid-level automatic supermini, save for the absolute silence.
There's a dogleg type automatic gate with settings for drive, reverse, park and engine braking - which you can flick to for more obvious recovery of energy from regenerative braking. It's a 'downhill' setting to generate extra juice, basically. Otherwise, it's as 'point and go' as any automatic, but with the distinct bonus of the instant response that electric power provides.
It's that whole '100 percent of torque from zero rpm' thing, see. It means the car, despite its very modest 63bhp and porky, battery-laden kerb weight, feels ebullient at low speeds. Even its 131lb.ft of torque is a bit weedy, but because there's no build up to it, you're all of a sudden at town speeds - this car's natural home.
Increased wind and road noise - or at least the perception of an increase in lieu of any engine noise - is apparent, but just something we'll have to get used to, probably. Post-60mph or so the i0n gets asthmatic, and the ride is jittery, most likely because the springs have been beefed up to compensate for the weight, but it's otherwise an agreeable runabout.
Worth Noting
No statistic will convince the range anxiety set to stop worrying faced with the prospect of a car with an 80-mile range, and which could conk out long before that if it's pressed hard. Carmakers have a go, though. Peugeot, for example, told us that, statistically, an average car journey is 20 miles: 40 percent are shorter than three miles, and the average car is only on the move eight percent of the time. Eighty-mile range? More than enough, see!
In the face of that, the i0n's six-hour charging time seems reasonable, and particularly mindful of the fact it can be charged to 80 percent (60 miles or so, presumably) in half an hour. That's with a special charging thingy, mind, and for that you'll probably need a garage. Crumbs. Better move the multi-gym and the beer fridge out of there, eh?
Worth Noting
An unknown quantity at present, though Peugeot rather astonishingly claims the i0n's 'operational cost' is less than €2 per 100km. That's below 3p per mile. There's also the fact that, since 1990, the price of electricity has remained relatively stable, whereas, of course, oil and fuel prices have risen exponentially. Obviously that electric cost stability will change if, as Peugeot predicts, over four percent of car sales are electric by 2020 - electricity companies aren't stupid suckers.
Summary
Are we all charged up about the i0n? Honestly, no. It's certainly not the sort of car you'll be desperate to park up outside your conservatory to plug in. However, it's by no means G-Wizingly depressing either; once the silent novelty wears off, you'll still be left with a decent and very cheap to run hatchback, with a range that will be manageable for most. It bodes well. Don't worry - they'll get more stylish, eventually.