Nat Barnes ponders on how much plug-in hybrids offer a best-of-both-worlds approach.

Peugeot 508 SW GT PHEV

List price (BiK): £40,130 (12%) CO2: 34g/km MPG/ EV range: 200.8mpg / 33-39mls Test efficiency: 85.5mpg

Our tester’s average fuel economy has crept up to 85.5mpg

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Does EV range matter in a plug-in hybrid vehicle? Discuss.

Range has always been a thorny issue for PHEVs. The relatively limited mileage PHEVs can offer has always been derided by drivers of fully electric vehicles, while they also constantly carry around effectively two ‘engines’ – the traditional petrol or diesel and the electric motor and battery. So while PHEVs may offer the best of both worlds, they also offer the worst.

There is also the thorny issue of EAER, the latest method by which EV mileage is calculated – thanks to HMRC – though in the real world the EAER range is about as likely to be seen as the contents of editor Challen’s wallet.

Take my Peugeot 508 PHEV as a perfect example. Officially, the EV range is anything between 33 and 39 miles, but in reality even after with a full charge in perfect conditions, I’ve never seen a mileage figure on the gauge higher than 29 miles. Worse still, now that the weather has turned colder, I’ve even seen a maximum range on full charge as low as 19 miles – less than half that claimed figure.

I’m not about to pretend that that’s anything other than disappointing, but the more relevant question is, is that a problem? I’m probably on top of my charging more than most as I’ve outlined in previous reports, but with judicious and regular charging, I generally always leave the house with a full battery which is a godsend for those shorter journeys when you just pop out or for commuting to the train station.

The proof, as ever, is in the pudding and the result is my average fuel economy which has crept up to 85.5mpg. For a family estate the size of this 508 SW, I think that’s a bit of a result.

The fruits of the Barnes’ household endeavours

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How do you like them apples? It’s been that time of year again in the Barnes household. The time where our garden apple trees have to be stripped before they either litter the lawn with an apple-based carpet or all the local bird life get sick of eating them (which is the 12^th of never, by the way…).

Now, I like apple crumble as much as the next person – which is saying something given that the next person is editor Challen – but I do have my limits. From apple crumble to apple chutney to giving them to numerous neighbours many times over, the fact is that we’ve simply got far more apples than we can handle.

The answer thankfully comes in the form of a farm half an hour up the road, which takes them and juices them for us to turn into our apple juice. Transport is the problem, however. Despite having given away copious amounts, there is still the not-so-small matter of virtually every large receptacle we own being filled with them.

Which is where the Peugeot 508 SW comes in. I realise that many of my previous posts have featured the 508’s rear-end and the boot space, but in my eyes, it can’t be underestimated. Family life and estate cars have gone hand in hand for generations and, despite the proliferation of crossovers, I firmly believe there’s a hard core of us that are willing to continue that – into the electrification generation.

Clearly Peugeot agrees that too as it has announced the arrival next year of the fully electric 308 estate – a car which I’ve already mentally marked up as a future long-termer. This 508 may only be a plug-in hybrid, but as our rising average fuel economy has shown – now up to a heady 81.7mpg – if you combine lots of short journeys with judicious charging, then that needn’t be a hindrance.

So, with a heady 160kg of apples piled into every corner of the 508’s 530-litre boot, we set off for the farm wondering whether it’s possible to get more middle class than taking your own apples to make your own apple juice in a plug-in hybrid. Two weeks later, that same boot was doing the same job in reverse, except this time it was home to 155 bottles of apple juice. No prizes for guessing what everyone is getting for Christmas this year…

User error meant a visit to Eden Peugeot was largely unnecessary

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It’s the automotive equivalent of that moment in the supermarket. You know the one. Where you search in vain for the Marmite or eggs (or in editor Challen’s case, the free-range, privately educated caviar in 5kg tins), then finally give up and ask an assistant, only to find you’re standing right next to it.

That’s exactly how I felt in Eden Peugeot as the very polite service manager pointed out the error of my ways with my long-term Peugeot 508. Regular readers will remember me struggling with Apple Carplay which just refused to work in the 508. The reason why, it turned out, was down to pure user error – I had plugged the lead into the wrong USB port (there are two) and the one on the driver’s side is obscured from view by the steering wheel. Once the lead was plugged in to the correct one, it worked perfectly well.

In a vague defence against my utter stupidity, the system did need updating (hence the past occasions when the whole screen refused to work), so there was still a requirement to visit the dealer after all. Well, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. The second factor in my fragile defence was also that even the servicing department had been unaware of the issue with the two difference ports until a recent training session.

Still, all the local miles I’ve been doing recently have enabled my average fuel economy to recoup following my largely charging-free trip to Devon in the summer. It’s already recovered back to 74.2mpg and I figure the more electric miles I do, the higher that figure will go. And with that in mind it’s slightly frustrating that I’ve not yet seen a fully charged range figure starting with a ‘3’ as yet. The highest I’ve had has been 28 miles. I excused the PSE its pitiful EV range due to its performance aspirations, but I expected more from the GT. Again, I’m hoping that with more miles on the odometer, it will ‘learn’ my driving and rise accordingly.

Our new 508 SW GT PHEV long-termer

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After three months with the PSE, if I was expecting familiarity with the 508 to ease the arrival of the GT PHEV to the fleet, then I was wrong.

It’s been something of a baptism of fire for the GT. Was stated in my last report it’s booked in to my local Peugeot dealer to have the Apple Carplay and touchscreen looked at, which hopefully will resolve things. A month-long wait for a booking was frustrating, but given a couple of occasions where the entire screen has frozen, I’m already concerned that the problems will be more complicated than a simple ‘switch it off and on again’. Fingers crossed.

The GT hasn’t had the easiest of starts either. A holiday trip to Devon was a great way to stretch its legs, but despite having a holiday rental home with an EV charger, we didn’t get to use it. The reason why was a flat rate charge of £35 by the landlords.

Call us Scrooge, but that’s the equivalent of 500-600 miles which is hard enough to do on a five-day holiday in a full EV, let alone in our plug-in hybrid. Plus, the owners also expressly forbade use of a granny charger, despite me using one at home for all my charging.

No doubt charges like this will become the norm in time, but it did leave a sour taste in my mouth – especially forbidding granny chargers. Don’t get me wrong, I’d be happy to pay to use the charger, but £35 seemed a bit steep to us.

Thankfully I did manage a couple of top-ups at public chargers while out on day trips, but the resulting lack of charging has meant that the 508’s average economy has dropped faster than throwing editor Challen’s wallet out of the window of his top-floor luxury penthouse apartment. Now we’re back into our more usual driving routine, I may reset the trip computer to give the average a fair chance to recover.

Our Peugeot 508 PSE is being replaced with a 508 GT

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Peugeot 508 PSE SW

List price (BiK): £55,795 (14%) CO2: 46g/km MPG/ EV range: 138.9mpg / 26mls Test efficiency: 98.4mpg

As one door closes, another one opens. Or, in the four-wheeled terms of the Fleet World long-term garage, as the Peugeot 508 PSE leaves, a 508 GT arrives.

Our three-month stint with the 508 PSE was certainly a memorable one, for both all the wrong and the right reasons. Nobody, not even Peugeot, would pretend that the flagship 508 PSE was a typical business car, but as my staggering 98.4mpg average fuel economy showed, with judicious and regular charging, it’s not beyond possibility that the plug-in hybrid technology can work for you – even if it’s more focused towards performance than ultimate economy.

The PSE was also a pretty respectable driver’s car too, it’s just that the combined nature of both a family car and the plug-in hybrid tech meant that the opportunities to flex those driving muscles were somewhat few and far between during our brief tenure.

With the arrival of the 508 GT however, one element of the PSE that I certainly won’t miss though was its ride quality. As I’ve said here before, nobody buys a PSE expecting a Rolls Royce-like ride, but on 20-in alloy wheels (compared to the 18s on the new GT), the difference in ride quality was immediately obvious for the better.

Yes, we’ll miss the PSE’s head-turning looks and styling, but the GT’s comfort levels are already making up for that. Aside from a few details and less interior comforts such as massaging or heated front seats though, the inside is much the same. Our first stop, however, will be to our local Peugeot garage as the GT’s Apple Carplay isn’t working and the entire touchscreen has already frozen on a couple of journeys. Fingers crossed it’s a quick fix.

Our tester pretty much put all of the 508 SW’s 1,780 litres of boot space to good use

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As the last review was focused on the Peugeot 508 PSE’s performance, both in terms of its pace and also its parsimony, I thought it was about to time to focus on another ‘P’ – practicality.

It’s odd to think that not so long ago, a car manufacturer having an estate car in their line-up was pretty much a necessity – especially so for the business market. Now though, thanks to the proliferation of crossovers onto the market, despite their everyday practical advantages, estates have almost become a novelty, particularly so when it comes to plug-in hybrids.

Compared to their crossover equivalents, estates are usually more economical, have more space and are cheaper to buy and run. But if you’re after a plug-in hybrid estate car like the 508, there isn’t a lot of choice to be had. And, call me as up to date as an oil lamp, but I will always prefer an estate car to a crossover and I’m sure I can’t be alone.

A good reason for that preference was underlined with some home DIY that I’ve been undertaking recently. With a lot of wood and an old broken-up log store to dispose of, I needed to pay a visit to the local dump. In the interests of full disclosure, I’d also like to point out that no car interiors were harmed in the making of this main picture.

With the rear seats folded down, the 508 SW boasts a substantial 1,780 litres of boot space (530 litres with the seats are up) which, crucially, is exactly the same as the petrol or diesel models – not the case with many PHEVs. While there were still a few wafer-thin gaps, it’s fair to say I utilised the majority of those 1,780 litres of space on the way to the dump, for the sheer reason that I didn’t want to make a second trip. But it just underlined how good traditional estates can be when you need a workhorse rather than a lifestyle car.

The Barnes family have been putting a toe in the water testing our 508 SW PSE

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I’ve been undertaking some longer journeys in the 508 recently. For any standard petrol or diesel car that would be something of a ‘so-what’ statement; but of course, long journeys are the bane of any plug-in hybrid, which are better suited to lots of shorter trips where the electric range can be taken advantage of.

So, I must admit to not having had high hopes for the 508 PSE, especially on a particular day of a 230-mile round trip. That was made even more so by an odd malfunction that saw the car tell me that the electric mode wasn’t available despite a full charge, something I’ve already experienced before when it was quickly resolved by the old IT specialist trick of ‘turn it off and on again’.

With those 230-plus miles, the electric range would probably barely cover 10% of the total distance at motorway speeds, so I reset the trip computer for a little experiment. By luck, I managed to sneak a brief charge at my destination (ironically queuing behind editor Challen in his BMW iX3); enough to give me a further 22 miles of EV range displayed for my return journey. But by the time I returned home, my average fuel economy for the day was reading at 67.3mpg which I was quite impressed by. Yes, it’s down on my overall three-figure average, but that 67.3mpg is still on a par, if not better than, a really good diesel.

A handful of days later was a trip of a different kind with a hour-long cross-country route down fast and winding A-roads. I must admit to not having really flexed the 508’s sportier muscles too much yet, as normally I have the family on board. Here though, I was able to take advantage of the PSE’s performance and sharp turn-in and enjoy its enthusiast-led characteristics.

Yes, my average economy for that particular journey probably dropped faster than editor Challen’s hand when it’s his round, but the smile on my face as I pulled up at my destination was definitely worth it. Sometimes, you just have to let your heart rule your head…

Helped by the warmer weather, we’ve been achieving the claimed 26 miles for the 508 SW PSE’s fully electric range

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In my last review, I made a passing mention to just how many compliments the Peugeot 508 PSE SW gets. That has shown no sign of abating so far, as almost everyone who sees the 508 comments on its styling and good looks.

On top of the standard 508, the PSE’s body kit adds in lowered suspension, Selenium Grey paintwork and huge 20-inch ‘Exxar’ wheels, ensuring it turns plenty of heads. We also like the luminous green highlights on the bodywork and the brake calipers too.

It’s not all perfect though. Those huge alloy wheels and low-profile tyres (245/35s) make for a firm ride and very annoyingly it’s all too easy to graze them when parking, despite being careful. They also make for a pretty firm ride too which, for a family car, isn’t always ideal.

The same goes for its low-slung nature; we live on a hill and have found we have to back in at a very defined angle to avoid catching the underside as we pull into our drive.

Of course, for many drivers a lot of that is possibly academic, as you don’t really choose a car like the 508 PSE by mistake, but it’ll be interesting to see how we feel when we switch it for the standard plug-in hybrid later on.

The real benefits of the 508’s plug-in hybrid tech are obvious too, with its 114mpg average fuel economy so far. I’ve run plug-in hybrids before and it almost goes without saying that they’re at their best when you maximise their electric range. Mentally, I’ve always run PHEVs down until their EV range is showing single figures before charging up, but the PSE’s system is obviously tuned for performance rather than economy.

The good news is that with the warmer weather of late, I’ve been regularly matching the claimed 26 miles as the fully charged range. The bad news is that this obviously only requires a trip of eight miles before I’m into those single figures, so I’ve been charging pretty frequently.

Is that a pain? Not really, but you do have to be fastidious about charging. My thoughts, as always, are that while not free, those 26 miles are always going to be the cheapest way to travel, with fuel prices being so high, so I want to maximise those miles as much as possible. Just call me Scrooge…

The flagship 508 SW is the Peugeot Sport Engineered version with bespoke handling and 360hp of power

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It’s a measure of just how far the company car market has come that us running a Peugeot 508 SW on our long-term fleet might now be seen as a little unusual.

Without wanting to get too wistful, not so long ago, office car parks would have been full of family saloons like this. And yet now, the Nissan Primera and Renault Laguna are long gone, Vauxhall’s Insignia has just departed and the Ford Mondeo range is a shadow of its former self. All have been slain by the ever-continuing popularity of the crossover.

Except not the Peugeot 508 which has stood firm. I’m a big fan of traditional estate cars, so over the next six months, I’m trying out the 508 SW in plug-in hybrid guise to see if it can stand up to that crossover onslaught in the family car market.

I’m also doing things a little different. The first three months will be spent trying out this flagship Peugeot Sport Engineered version, tuned for performance and handling along with packing a 360hp punch, then we’ll be swapping into a more traditional plug-in hybrid SW model.

No, I haven’t had one too many sips of Top Deck (to keep up the retro theme…) and I’m not about to pretend that the PSE is exactly prime fleet market material, but as a halo model to tempt drivers, it has to be applauded – nobody ever complained about the Mondeo ST or Sierra Cosworth after all.

The good news for business drivers is that the PSE still boasts a 46g/km emissions figure, putting it into the 14% Benefit-in-Kind bracket with a 26-mile all-electric range. With that electric power focused on performance rather than parsimony, I’m planning on keeping the battery topped up with electricity as frequently as possible to maximise its economy.

And, while I know looks aren’t everything (or so Mrs B keeps telling me), I think the 508 SW PSE is a stunning looking car. The standard SW is pretty easy on the eye anyway, but the PSE takes that a step further. We’ve already had pedestrians and other drivers asking us about it – and that’s not something you normally get in a family estate.

Yes, this PSE is an unusual case, but we’ll be asking whether it can really fulfil the promise of being both a sports car and a plug-in hybrid estate at the same time. Watch this space.