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Short note: I drove an electric Peugeot this week [1]

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Date: 2022-12-11

Mine was white

So, I had a car accident recently. I was turning left during a rain storm on a curve just over the crest of a hill, and was hit in the rear quarter of my car by an older Citroën sedan driven by a fellow with his two kids in the back seat. He was going too fast for conditions, and once he saw me he couldn’t brake in time (thanks to the lack of anti-lock brakes in his car). Luckily, despite five people distributed among the two cars, there were no injuries.

My car, a VW Golf, had little damage — a small dent in the metal part of the fender, a small puncture in the plastic bumper cover, and a scrape on my rear wheel. The front end of his Citroën, though, was in pretty bad shape. Drivable, but bad shape.

My insurance company had me take the car to a nearby Peugeot dealer that had a body shop for assessment. I could have taken it anywhere for the actual repair, but the place seemed to be competent and the fellow I dealt with seemed to know what he was doing, so I made an appointment for the repair (un rendez-vous pour les réparations).

This week I dropped my car off for three days to have the mostly cosmetic body work done, and was given the keys to a Peugeot e-208 electric car to use as a loaner car.

It was a very nice car. A bit quirky, being French, of course, but well built. Extremely quiet. The GPS could have been better at distinguishing the car from the road it was on, but I knew where I was going anyway, so didn’t need to rely on it.

Probably like many electric cars, it has three driving modes: Eco, Normal, and Sport. Here’s a thing about a difference between American English and French: in the U.S., when you see something described as “Eco” it often refers to ecology. An Eco-friendly product in the U.S., would be something that is environmentally or ecologically friendly.

Not in France. “Eco” means economy. Pretty much always. So when you see something described as “Eco” it means it’s cheap, or at least is intended to cost you less. So “Eco” mode is one that saves electricity. I suppose in this case either inference would work, but I’m sure whomever designed the label for that mode had money in mind, not the environment.

Fact is, even in Eco mode the car was plenty fast. Lots of torque. It just takes off — I’m sure I’m not saying anything electric car drivers don’t already know. But this was the first time I had been in an electric car since the early 1990s with one of those GM cars that was out for awhile — a friend who worked for the local power company was allowed to bring a demo model home one weekend and he took my kids and me out on a ride to check out the newfangled electric car.

Compared to this Peugeot, it was lame.

Anyway, this is not a leading-edge car. It maxes out on around 350 km range (about 215 miles). It has a remarkably good backup camera, though. Very clear and detailed information — better than my Golf’s. One quirk that was a bit frustrating was unplugging the charging cable. I had to use the key fob to release the cable from the car, something I didn’t know in the dark when I was trying to unplug it to go pick up my wife at a friend’s house. It makes sense, of course, to keep people from stealing the charge power, but criminy it was frustrating until I figured it out. Again, nothing electric car drivers wouldn’t already know.

All things considered, I’d buy one if I were in the market. It costs around 33K € to 39K € depending on options, after accounting for the 6K € environmental discount offered by the government.

But it was nice having my Golf back. It’s just more familiar. The rumble of the diesel engine, though, was a lot louder than I remembered before I had experienced the quiet of an electric car.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/12/11/2141265/-Short-note-I-drove-an-electric-Peugeot-this-week

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