Citroen e-Berlingo Review & Prices

The Citroen e-Berlingo is a car built for a better world. A world where badge snobbery isn’t a thing; where people aren’t taken in by the false idea that a practical family car must be SUV-shaped.

The e-Berlingo might be van-based, but it has a quirky character all of its own, and is kind of stylish in an anti-fashion sort of way. Basically, it’s as if JML, that company that advertises on daytime TV, made a car — something that’s so practical, you didn’t realise you needed it.

If you’re assuming that being van-based means that the e-Berlingo is going to rattle and smoke with nasty old diesel power, forget it — there is, thanks to customer demand, a diesel Berlingo on sale once again, but this e-Berlingo gets a 136hp electric motor driving the front wheels, which is fed energy from a 54kWh lithium-ion battery.

In theory, a full charge of that battery will take you for a total of 212 miles, but to be honest the e-Berlingo will struggle to match that claim. Aim on getting somewhere between 150 and 180 miles if you’re driving in mixed conditions, and probably as little as 140 miles if you’re pounding up and down the motorway.

Does that make the e-Berlingo less than practical? Yes, a bit, but it’s great for urban and intra-urban commuters, and there are helpful driving modes — Sport, Normal, and Eco — which can tweak the e-Berlingo’s performance according to your tastes.

Citroen e-Berlingo: electric range, battery and charging data

Range: 212 miles
Efficiency: 2.8-3.5 miles per kWh
Battery size: 54kWh
Max charge speed: 100kW
Charge time AC: 7-8hrs 0-100%
Charge time DC: 30mins 10-80%
Charge port location: Left rear
Power outputs: 136hp (in Sport mode)

The total useable capacity of that battery is 50kWh, and the e-Berlingo charges at up to 100kW from a DC public fast charger, so you can top up fairly quickly, getting from 0% to 80% charge in 30 minutes — although it will be a brave e-Berlingo driver who dares to run the battery down to 0% before connecting to a charger. Charging at home, on a 7.4kW wallbox, will give you a full charge, from flat, in about eight hours.

The e-Berlingo, just like the petrol and diesel models, comes in a choice of sizes. If you only need five seats and fancy a smaller vehicle for parking, then you can have the five-seat M version. If you need more space, there’s a longer model, called the XL, which comes with seven seats. Both versions come in either Plus or Max trim, and standard kit includes lots of safety equipment, folding picnic tables in the back seats, LED headlights (now in a new design featuring angled LED running light bars that look as if someone’s been buying up old nightclub glow-sticks), digital instruments, and a 10.0-inch touchscreen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

High-spec Max models get luxury touches such as dual-zone climate, electric, heated door mirrors, a reversing camera, 17-inch alloy wheels, a heated steering wheel, Citroen’s ‘advanced comfort seats’, and three individual chairs in the back. Either way, the interior feels pretty cheap — it’s all van-grade plastics in there — but you’ll forgive that for the sheer amount of space on offer, and the acreage of practical storage areas.

Speaking of which, both e-Berlingo models are almost ridiculously practical. Five-seat models offer 775-litres of boot space, while the seven-seater XL models have 209-litres. The third-row seats can be removed if you need more luggage space. Fold the whole lot down and you get a massive 4,000-litres of cargo space.

To drive? Well, it’s a softly sprung electric van with not much range, so no-one is going to be using an e-Berlingo to do laps of Brands Hatch. It’s fine, as long as you’re prepared to take your time. The 136hp motor has enough power, but no more, and you’ll be spending most of your time slowing down to save on range anyway.

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The e-Berlingo is relatively reasonably priced for an electric car, especially if you’re happy compromising on range to get all that interior space. There are several cloned versions of the e-Berlingo sold by some of the other Stellantis Group (the massive conglomerate of which Citroen is part) brands, such as the Peugeot e-Rifter and the Vauxhall Combo Life Electric. There’s also a distantly-related Toyota Proace City Electric, all of which are basically the same as the e-Berlingo, cost about the same, and have the same performance.

What gives the e-Berlingo an edge on these cars is that it has a touch more character. Oddly, Renault doesn’t sell the rather handsome Kangoo electric van-based MPV in the UK, which is a shame as it’s pretty nice, but the incoming new electric Renault 4 might make a good rival to the e-Berlingo, in terms of electric performance, and its sheer Frenchness, if not quite spaciousness.

Electric power is perfectly tuned for urban driving, but the range runs out fast on motorways, and the e-Berlingo is definitely no sports car on twisty roads

In town

Thanks to the instant power delivery of electric motors, the e-Berlingo feels pretty nippy from a standing start, up to low-to-medium speeds. Certainly, this is a car which is ideally tuned for in-town driving, as that’s where its power drain is going to be lowest, and therefore where you’ll be able to eke out the most range. As a school-run special, it has few peers.

The electric motor also means no engine noise — and certainly no diesel clatter — at low speeds, and the e-Berlingo’s softly-sprung suspension is ideally tuned for speed bumps and urban potholes. The big windows and good all-round visibility help too, and the boxy shape means it’s easy to park, helped by standard rear parking sensors and the Max model’s rear parking camera.

The only issue is that the big boxy body tends to amplify any rattles and noises over urban lumps and bumps, which can make the e-Berlingo feels rather cheaper even than it actually is.

On the motorway

Don’t go on the motorway in an e-Berlingo. Honestly, don’t. It’s not that it can’t cope in a mechanical sense. The same soft springs that give it an easy-going ride around town work well on big roads too, allowing you to lope along in comfort, and if you’ve upgraded to the Max model, then the Citroen ‘advanced comfort seats’ with their specially designed foam certainly take the sting out of long journeys. Equally helpful are cruise control (not adaptive cruise, though), lane keeping aids, and auto high beam headlights.

All that’s fine. The problem is that pushing that big, boxy body through a 70mph headwind just exhausts the battery far too quickly, and you’ll be lucky to squeeze 140 miles out of the e-Berlingo if you’re cruising at the legal limit. Really, for long journeys, it needs a much bigger battery. If you’re a long-haul motorway driver on the regular, and still want an EV, consider a longer-legged Skoda Enyaq instead.

It’s worth remembering that selecting between Sport, Normal, and Eco modes doesn’t just change how quickly the accelerator responds, it actually cuts the power down to just 80hp in Eco mode, so remember to flick over to Sport for on-ramps and steep hills.

On a twisty road

You should totally take an e-Berlingo on a twisty road, as that’s a good way of keeping your electrical energy consumption down, and also finding lots of opportunities to brake and transfer energy back to the battery via regenerative braking.

You’ll be expecting the soft e-Berlingo to be a soggy mess on a tight and twisty road, and it kind of is, but it’s not unpleasantly so. It’s really about you accepting the fact that it’s not a Mazda MX-5 and settling into a gentle rhythm of loping along a road at a relatively gentle pace, not being too bothered by the over-light steering or the way the body leans over in the middle of a corner, in classic Citroen fashion. Do that, and the e-Berlingo is actually quite a pleasant thing to drive.

The e-Berlingo is massively practical, with seats for up to seven and a huge boot, but the extra seats of the XL model aren’t the roomiest

Officially, the e-Berlingo has up to 186 litres of storage space dotted about the cabin in various bins and cubbies. That means that, in the cabin, it has more storage space than some cars can manage in their actual boots. This, then, is a seriously practical car.

There are massive door bins (unlined though, so prepare for rattles), chunky cupholders in the traditional van position at the outer edges of the dash, a small storage area below the air conditioning controls which is home to an optional wireless phone charger, a storage locker above the instrument panel, a storage box at the base of the centre console, and there are even two gloveboxes (and a small open storage tray) thanks to the fact that the passenger-side airbag is installed in the roof.

Space in the back seats

Headroom in the back of the e-Berlingo verges on the ridiculous. If you’re the chairperson of your local Top Hat Wearers’ Society then this is the car for you. Rear seat legroom is also very generous, and better than you’d find in the rival short-wheelbase version of the Volkswagen Caddy MPV (which isn’t available in electric form anyway). Max versions get three individual seats in the back (you can add those to the M version with an option pack) which is helpful when it comes to hauling kids around, and there are three ISOFIX anchor points in the back, which is really handy. Rear-seat occupants even get flip-up picnic tables, which are nice to have, but they can’t hold much in the way of weight.

The twin sliding rear side doors are hugely helpful when parking in narrow spaces, and if you’ve gone for the XL model, then the seats slide, fold, and flip to make getting in and out of the back easier. There is decent space in the third-row of seven-seat versions, but it’s definitely better for kids than it is for adults. Those third row seats sit slightly higher than the rest, which is good for the view out, but the high-set rear floor means that taller passengers will have their knees up around their earlobes.

There’s even more storage space if you go for the optional ‘Modutop’ roof, which incorporates glass panels with drop-down airline-style bins which can keep rear seat passengers occupied for ages.

Boot space

Boot space is definitely the e-Berlingo’s winning card. In M form, with five seats, up to the luggage cover, there’s up to 641 litres of luggage space, which is perhaps good but maybe not exceptional. However, upgrade to the XL model, and fold down the extra boot seats, and there’s a whopping 806 litres to play with. Again, that’s just up to the luggage cover. Start folding the middle row of seats and you can open up 1,849 litres, which is actually slightly less space than the 1,884 litres offered by the M model, which is down to the space taken up by the folded third row.

Max models do benefit from tailgate glass that opens separately to the rest of the boot, which is handy if you just want to chuck something small in or are parked too close to something to open the massive tailgate.

If you need to tow anything, the M model of the e-Berlingo has a maximum towing weight of 750kg, either braked or unbraked, but the XL isn’t rated for towing at all. Then again, towing anything will put a major dent in your battery range anyway.

The e-Berlingo’s cabin is made of cheap van-spec plastics, but it’s comfy and rugged

The e-Berlingo’s dash is where you can most clearly see its van origins, as if the big cupholders on the outer edges weren’t enough of a clue. The plastics used throughout the cabin are generously referred to as ‘robust’ and that they are. They’re also rough in places, but Citroen has tried to enliven things with jazzy colour options, and brighter trim for the seats in Max models.

Digital instruments come as standard, and these offer clear information. The chunky steering wheel gets some nice glossy plastic inserts, and the proper physical buttons on the wheel are easy to use. The little toggle switch for gear selection is neat enough, and the driving mode switch is next to that on the small plinth that juts out from the middle of the dash. There are also two USB-C ports to help top up your gadgets.

The 10.0-inch touchscreen infotainment system, standard on the e-Berlingo, is okay to use, and it helps enormously that Citroen has stuck with proper physical buttons for the air conditioning system, but even so the menus are often rather impenetrable, and items that you’ expect to come under one heading are often buried under another.

With the e-Berlingo being fully electric, and having a small battery, you’re looking at some seriously cheap running costs if you can charge at home, and better yet on a night rate.

Charging an e-Berlingo overnight, on the cheapest night rate, 7.9p, means you could get a full charge for just £3.95. Public charging, or charging at peak time, would be more expensive, of course. Still you’ll be paying only £10 for a first year’s VED motor tax, and BIK rates for business users start from just £16. Who cares about range — still just 212 miles, remember — when the running costs are that low?

If you are charging on high-speed DC public chargers, then the e-Berlingo can be charged at up to 100kW of power, allowing for a 0-80% charge in 30 minutes. Home charging on a 7.4kW wallbox can take around eight hours.

The e-Berlingo does come with a lot of safety kit as standard, and while it’s based on a van, that van is in turn based on the Citroen EMP2 chassis, which is used under several passenger car models too. The Berlingo was last tested by Euro NCAP in 2018, and it managed a four-star score, with an impressive 91% rating for adult occupant protection, 81% for child occupants, 58% for vulnerable road users, and 68% for its electronic safety systems.

As standard, those systems include stability control, ABS brakes, front, side, and rear curtain airbags, lane keeping assistance, automatic emergency braking, speed limit monitoring, automatic high-beam lights, driver attention alert, cruise control, and a speed limiter.

There’s an optional pack for Max models which includes extra parking sensors, blind spot monitoring, and upgraded lane keeping with adaptive cruise control.

Being as it has only one moving part — the electric motor — there’s little enough to worry about when it comes to mechanical issues with the e-Berlingo. There’s a standard three-year warranty, capped at 60,000 miles, but which has unlimited miles for the first two years. There’s an extended warranty available at an extra cost, and the e-Berlingo’s battery is separately warrantied for eight years or 100,000 miles, if it falls below 70% of its original energy storage capacity.

Citroen once had a reputation for fragility when it came to reliability, but that seems to be a thing of the past. The Berlingo didn’t feature in the most recent Driver Power survey, but several other Citroen models finished strongly. In the survey of the best car brands, Citroen came in an impressive fifth place out of 32 marques, with only 15.1% of owners reporting faults with their cars — fewer even than Toyota.