Peugeot 508 Hybrid Review

Practicality and Boot Space

The Peugeot 508 PHEV is practical enough to cope with the needs of most families on the go. Both the Fastback (which is a sloping, hatchback boot that gives the car the look of a saloon with better practicality) and the SW estate model have healthy boot floor areas of over 1.0-metre in length and 1.1m wide. Then you can drop the 60/40 split rear seats flat to extend that boot length to nearly 2.0-metres. 

However, the swoopy roofline on the Fastback does make for a rather shallow boot space, so if you’ve got kids or dogs, or need to carry bikes and the like at all, the estate’s lower load lip, more practical boot opening and deeper load space will all make it much easier to live with. Not as easy to live with as the Skoda Superb iV and VW Passat GTE, though. Also offered in hatchback and estate forms, both the Skoda and VW have bigger boots than the 508, as well as better headroom for rear passengers. 

Technology 

The Peugeot’s dash is dominated by the 10-inch infotainment touchscreen that controls most of the car’s functions. It includes nav, digital radio, Bluetooth, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto – the latter two allowing you to fully integrate and control your phones functions and many of its apps into the car’s screen. There are two USB inputs, while GT Line and top-spec GT trims get a wireless phone charging plate.

The touchscreen isn’t the quickest to respond and it can be tricky to find some system settings that are hidden in layers of menus, but with a bit of familiarity and by using the ‘piano’ style shortcut buttons below the screen it’s easy to find and control all the features. 

In addition to the touchscreen, the eye-catching digital dials are a real feature of the 508’s cabin. Called ‘i-Cockpit’, the driver’s readout can be set to different layouts and colour themes. There’s no head-up display as you can get on the BMW 330e, but Peugeot would tell you that you don’t need it as having the dials perched up high above the steering wheel in your line of sight, anyway. That, or the steering wheel is too low and the speedo often obscured by the steering wheel – you can interpret the quirky driving position and dash layout either way, just make sure that you like it before putting any money down. 

Safety

The Peugeot 508 plug-in hybrid gets a really decent array of safety features. An autonomous braking system will intervene at low speeds if the car senses an imminent collision with a car, pedestrian or cyclist, and you also get the relevant speed limit beamed on to your dash. A reversing camera with front and rear parking sensors is also included on every car, as is blind spot warning, lane keep assist and cruise control. 

You have to go for top-spec GT trim to get lane-keep assist and adaptive cruise control with stop-and-go traffic jam function, which functions as a semi-autonomous driving mode if you activate all of the systems. You can add these functions – called Driver Assist Plus pack – as an optional £400 extra on all of the other models, and there’s even a Night Vision camera as an option across the range, but it costs £1300. With the full LED headlights that are standard on GT and GT Line, or an £850 option on Allure, the Night Vision camera really is more gimmick than safety feature. There are no ‘Matrix’ LED headlights, which deliver high beam visibility without dazzling oncoming traffic, in the Peugeot as there are in most rivals.

You get six airbags included, and the Peugeot scored a full five star rating in Euro NCAP crash tests – albeit in 2018, when the tests were less stringent. 

There’s no space saver spare tyre since the batteries take up the available space beneath the boot floor.