Hi There
I have had the good fortune to have the chance of driving a Peugeot iOn for a couple of weeks to see how the vehicle would perform being used by an engineer to carry out his duties. These duties related to multiple town visits from our base outside Newcastle at Shiremoor, for journeys into Newcastle City Centre and beyond i.e. Corbridge approximately 18 miles.
Having been loaned the vehicle I found the operation of the vehicle to be better than expected, although due to the weight of the vehicle the suspension was quite hard. The use of a direct drive motor and no gears gave the feeling of a very good constant rate of acceleration not achievable by most traditionally engined vehicles. Having said that it did take some time to get used to!
The only real difference was the concern over the length of miles available and after a couple of weeks of use I feel that this vehicle in its present layout would be best used as a town run around car. There are limitations in boot the area for storage.
Having a power usage meter instead of a rev counter was somewhat compelling because of the indicators 1) life left in the battery and 2) an indicator averaging out how many miles there may be left on the charge before you “ran out of juice”. However this became more of a tool for economic driving than a worry! The drive has always been great and has left a smile on my face due to the silence of the vehicle and the outstanding acceleration from a stationary start.
Charging is not an issue at the minute as most of the plentiful charging points dotted around Newcastle were basically empty, however as the cost of the vehicles reduce and the technology of the batteries and motors improves then the popularity of this type of transport will increase. In future there may not be enough charging points available. However, like our family’s second car which completes a yearly average of 3000 miles, often with multiple short journeys of 10 miles or less this vehicle could be run for a week on a single slow charge which would not require the possible battery life damaging super chargers that are to be fitted on long haul routes. However, I found it just as easy to “top up” each time which gave the full car range no problem. The maximum range indicated was 88 miles!
The vehicle itself is quite narrow but well laid out as with most modern cars. The seats were quite narrow but were comfortable enough for the journeys which I had to undertake. I took a journey with four large adults approximately 400Kilos with no detriment to the performance and comfort of the vehicle and all were impressed. Although the vehicle has all the creature comforts of air conditioning and automatic lights and windscreen wipers you always feel that to use it would sacrifice the mileage on a charge i.e. if you’re stationary and are not using the automatic air-con and fan but set both to “on” then the indicator averaging out how many miles there may be left chops an alarming 5~7 miles from the range however, being summer I generally drove around with the driver and passage windows vented this was usually enough to keep the iOn well ventilated and comfortable however, on the occasions with our great British summer i.e. very wet conditions this required the windows to be shut and the use of full air-con and the loss in miles proved to be no more than a slight concern.
To sum up this car with due consideration can complete 90% of my current office working requirements but due to operational requirements including access into the remote parts of Northumberland I would require a vehicle with a combustion engine. Without any hesitation I would consider a vehicle such as this as a second family vehicle but:
- Cost would be completely prohibitive.
- Costs have to be comparative to the size of vehicle class
- Range would be an issue.
- As a minimum a range between 100~150 miles would be preferable
- Battery life concerns need to be addressed
- Battery life needs to be considered as resale value will be affected
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