The New Peugeot e-2008 — Peugeot’s 79 Year Electric Vehicle Journey Leads Here
There’s a decent chance you didn’t know that Peugeot was working on electric cars 79 years ago, in 1941. We will not banish you from visiting CleanTechnica for not knowing that, especially since we didn’t know it.
Back in 1941, the motivation for trying to go the electric route was a bit different than it is today. Peugeot’s initial foray into EVs was “to combat the fuel shortages during the German occupation of France in the Second World War.” The vehicle used for that purpose was the Peugeot VLV, pictured below.
In a new press release, Peugeot highlighted several electric vehicle concepts and low-volume consumer cars it has sold over the decades, some very cool, some … odd. I recommend having a gander, but I’m not going to focus on those old concepts and uncompetitive models. The big focus of the news is Peugeot’s new e-2008, a fully electric SUV that I consider to be quite compelling. However, details matter, so let’s look at those.
The e-2008 is not a unicorn, but Peugeot made what I assume were some tough decisions in order to create a vehicle that could appeal to many buyers. It uses a relatively small (these days) 50 kWh battery in order to keep costs down — whether they are kept down enough to be competitive is a matter I’ll get to in a moment. It still has more than 200 miles of range — but just barely, at 206 miles (WLTP). Not long ago, 200 miles was considered a huge accomplishment for an EV, but these days it is not close to market leading, but using a 50 kWh battery instead of a 70 kWh or bigger battery surely saved several thousand dollars that many buyers will appreciate.
