Large families have big problems when it comes to choosing electric cars. They compromise and have to split who gets in the car and who gets in the bus, or they can buy two small EVs if they can afford, or they can buy a non-electric seven-seater. In the UK, it's even worse - there are only a handful of large family Evs, and neither is really affordable, except for the Citroen e-Berlingo and its Stellantis brothers. Peugeot saw the gap in its market and decided to electrify its best-selling large SUV - and the result is the 2026 E-5008. On paper, this is the perfect solution for busy households: you get 7 seats and are promised a range of more than 300 miles, the SUV looks modern and that all for smidgen under €47,000? It's not cheap, but there's nothing better than buying 2 EVs, a financial option that starts at about 616 euros a month, and many families have taken the plunge.
To see if those families were getting what was promised, I rented a brand new E-5008 210 for a few days. The 210 version comes with a single electric motor, which in combination with a 73kWh battery pack provides 210 hp. This configuration promises a mileage of only 499 km, as seen in most use cases. The car I was driving came in the 879 euro optional Okenite White that made this big SUV look crisp - it makes the big 19-inch wheels even more pop, the privacy first impressions count, and the E-5008 passes in its front. The front is high and the narrow LED headlights will squint at you, but offer surprisingly good performance. It looks muscular and purposeful due to the wheel arches and shiny black cladding along the bottom of the car.
Narrow windows make the roof a little lower, and the e-5008 makes it look aggressive and fast even when parking. There is absolutely no dispute that Peugeot nailed it in the design department. As you jump, you'll be greeted with Peugeot's latest and greatest interior design - modern swoopy lines, clever fabrics, and a little confusing multitude of screens. If you have never driven a modern Peugeot, the steering wheel will be a big (or rather small) surprise. By any standard - it is small. It's small and it's sitting in your lap, under a 24" panoramic screen, making you feel like you're playing a simulator game and not actually driving a big, heavy electric SUV.
The screen itself is divided into fully interactive gauge clusters and on-board entertainment parts. The graphics are easy to understand, the transitions between different themes are smooth and funky, but honestly, they are unnecessary. This is another example of a car company trying to gamify its dashboards rather than focus on what matters. You can choose what you want to see - one of the many confusing quirks about Peugeot infotainment where you will see your speed, next to the range and animation of what the car is doing at any given time - so the main screen will never show the map in street level detail. Below the main screen is the most unusual solution from the French automaker - another screen with interactive toggles.
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Here you can choose which options to display on the main screen.It is about 1 inch above. These are the main menu shortcuts - you can slide them left and right to reveal more options then you can continue on the main screen and adjust what you want to adjust. It's an absolutely pointless exercise. I found myself not using it at all and yearning for the actual button. After driving on bumpy B-roads and trying to adjust the ventilation using the i-toggle, prick the main screen to the right place to lower the temperature. Both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are onboard and both support wired and wireless connections. But the actual ease of use is a pain in the proverbial backside, especially when it comes to Android. Peugeot has its own satnav and voice assistant built-in, and trying to use Gemini on it can lead to some interesting conversations and many missed conversations.
The only button that enables both voice assistants sits on the steering wheel - tap it, Peugeot responds, and hold it down, Google chime. When the car hit a bump and the finger slipped off the button, the Peugeot Assistant informed me that I could not connect to the Internet and pressed the button again and I'm not entirely sure if it had anything to do with my phone, but the experience was as interesting as it was confusing. The center console, dashboard and door panels are what the company calls the "Rispy" embossed fabric, a combination of denim and linen, offered in an unpleasant gray shade. In real life, it looks even better - unless you touch it.
It's an impression that should be soft, but it actually feels like hard plastic wrapped in a thin cloth. Peugeot gets all the points here for design, but absolutely zero for execution. I wonder what the console storage cubby, which acts as elbow support, will look like after several years of mass use? The final mess comes from the radiotelephone charger - it sits in a small slot under the i-toggle screen. You have to slide the phone and wiggle it to get the charge. The green light shows that it's all good, but when the car navigates the road the phone slides and the orange and green diss on the dashboard you end up spending too much time trying to keep the phone in one place - I'm not sure if it's a clever idea.
But there is absolutely no confusion when it comes to comfort. The E-5008 has plenty of room for everyone - the seat is plush and comfortable and yet that confidence-inspiring way of hugging. The bench in the middle is large enough for 3 adults and can slide back and forth to create more space for the 3rd row passengers. And those passengers will need every room they can get - two kids in the back are fine, but trying to squeeze two adults out there for a long stint can put family relationships under a lot of stress.With all 7 seats taken, the cargo space is limited to 348 liters - certainly not enough room for luggage for 7 people, but it is still usable.
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Putting these rear seats down, you end up with 916 liters of cave - enough for a couple of camping gear and dogs. If you put all the rear seats down, you have 2,232 liters of cargo space. You can probably use the E-5008 as a small van when moving home. Moving on, the E-5008 is a very composed SUV - it certainly has legs, does not lean too much in the corners, and if anything for carrying 2.5 metric tons and 4 people on board, it's actually surprisingly fast, makes overtaking easier and feels much faster than the official figures. Reach the legal speed.Then there is an absolute lack of noise. Peugeot obviously spent a lot of time in the wind tunnel - the windows in the cabin are very quiet.
The comfort it provides suggests that it should be a great long-range cruiser, but here I found the main problem with this otherwise pretty good SUV. You can move all your belongings to the e-5008, you can take your whole family away for a long weekend, or the large Ibe Peugeot claims a maximum range of 499 km for a 73 kW battery, but this should be one of the most optimistic claims on the market. During the testing, I was not able to get more than 370 km out of the car. And that was when I was driving through the roads of A and B - not exceeding 80 km / h, without switching the air conditioner, gently accelerated and did not have cargo with only four people on board. Imagine having a boot full of 7 people and gear - you're lucky to get 322km.
Things get even worse when you want to use the highway. I optimistically decided to speed up one of my test drives and I had at least 322 km or three hours of driving to enjoy and I quickly realized that I was wrong - from being fully charged, the range shown ranged from a wildly optimistic 15km within the first 563 minutes. Choosing a larger 98kWh battery model will somehow fix the problem of the range, but comes at a price. The dual-motor version is not available in the UK - it has 2 motors, but it uses a battery of 460kwh, which is smaller than the official range sits at 73km. Judging from my experience with the FWD version, the realistic range is much closer to the 322km of the AWD model.
There may be only 1 conclusion in this review - the Peugeot E-5008 is a very confusing offer. It is large, comfortable, quiet and surprisingly fast, but very lacking in long-distance promises. It is an excellent family carrier for people living in rural areas, unless they can charge at home and travel more than 161km in one direction, and with an estimated 200,000 people, a surprisingly large of the UK population It seems Peugeot was very clever - the E-5008 considered a price range of €47,000 to €59,000 to be affordable (surprise, surprise) It is designed to meet the exact expectations of a very specific group of customers.
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