TRAVELLING A BIT FURTHER (some text hidden) --NONE--

By Jonathan Crouch

Peugeot's biggest People Carrier, the E-Traveller, has usefully improved its proposition. Jonathan Crouch drives it.

Ten Second Reviewword count: 82

You'd be surprised just how many options there are for a business or a family seeking full-electric power in a really large MPV. Here's Peugeot's take on this concept, the E-Traveller. This improved version now gets a smarter look and an improved version of the brand's large 75kWh battery, so it'll go a bit further on a single charge. And it'll seat up to nine, help you move house or function as an executive minibus. All without using a drop of fuel.

Backgroundword count: 105

Peugeot is building up a useful portfolio of full-electric models. Here's the marque's biggest EV, the E-Traveller, in this guise usefully improved. It's based on Peugeot's Expert van and it goes up against three identically-engineered designs, the Vauxhall Vivaro Life Electric, the Citroen e-SpaceTourer and the Toyota Proace Verso EV. All of these Stellantis-designed models have been enhanced and can now match the driving range of the segment leader, the Mercedes EQV. But this Peugeot costs a lot less than that Stuttgart model and offers a useful choice of body styles. Both these things might be of interest to business users and suburban family customers.

Driving Experienceword count: 369

The main news with this updated E-Traveller isn't really the smarter look but that Peugeot has finally dumped the feeble 50kWh battery that in the old model was rated at just 136 miles (but which habitually struggled to make three-figures in the real world). The brand now restricts this E-Traveller to the bigger 75kWh battery you had to pay extra for in the pre-facelift model - and has improved this larger unit so that it now offers a WLTP-rated range quoted as being between 194 and 230 miles. That's still not as far as you might like - we struggled to get much more than around 180 miles in this test - but at least it now makes this Peugeot a more usable people-carrying wagon. Unfortunately though, the same 136hp motor as was used for the old 50kWh model must power it along; yes, basically the same one as is used by the brand's E-208 supermini weighing 600kgs less. So, as you can imagine, given that just 260Nm of torque must thrust nearly 2.2-tonnes of squarical MPV through the air, performance is, well, somewhat lethargic. Stellantis Group clones of this model aside, we actually can't remember driving an EV that took as long as 14.3s to reach 62mph, by which time you'll be pretty close to the modest 82mph maximum. Motorway speeding tickets will be rare, a road format you'll want to avoid because cruising at the national limit will see your EV range figure quickly drop like a stone, not helped by the squarical shape. To keep range reasonable, you'll need to frequently engage the most frequent 'Eco' drive mode but if you do that, power output is reduced to just 80hp - and you can imagine what that might be like with the car fully loaded on a long fast uphill climb. At which point you'll quickly be switching to one of the other two drive settings - 'Normal' and 'Power'. As part of the changes made to this updated model, a three-stage brake regen system has been added, operable via these steering wheel paddles. The fiercest setting makes a difference to frugality, but stops well short of offering the currently fashionable 'one-pedal' style of EV driving.

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