DS No 8 Review & Prices

The DS No.8 is an electric car which is the luxury French brand’s latest attempt to convince car buyers it can compete with established alternatives, particularly those from Germany. While France rules the Hermés-upholstered roost when it comes to luxury fashion and food, when it comes to cars it’s a different story. DS is like a tiny mouse taking on the elephants of BMW, Mercedes and Audi.

Which is why DS is trying, not for the first time, to re-invent itself, and this new No.8 SUV is an important part of that plan. First of all, there’s the name. Previously, DS models have all just had a number — 3,4,5,7,9 etc… — but now all of the French brand’s cars will be known as the No. and a number. So a number-number if you will. It feels like an attempt to create a link to that other great luxury French brand, Chanel.

The style of the No.8 is also really quite different. There’s a faint — very, very faint — whiff of Rolls-Royce about the sheer sides, the low roof, and the big grille. Whatever you compare it to, the No.8 is very striking, and certainly a different look for the brand. It’s sort of an SUV, with a bit of extra ride height and a bulky body, but DS has shrunk down the roof and made it almost a sleek four-door saloon.

Inside, there are the expected big screens, but there’s also a massive four-spoke steering wheel that looks as if a 1920s aeroplane has tried to crash through the front of the car. DS has also scooped out the back of the dashboard, and used soft background lighting to create a genuinely different, and appealing, ambience from what you’d find in one of those German alternatives.

It’s also reasonably roomy, in spite of that sucked-down roofline. There are clever heating solutions, as alongside the expected heated (and cooled, optionally) seats, there are also little heating fans in the headrests, which waft warm air down your neck. That might sound daft, but it’s a much more efficient way of keeping the No.8’s occupants warm than heating up the whole cabin, and that’s better for electric efficiency.

Oh yes, the No.8 is a fully electric model. It shares mechanical bits with the Peugeot 3008 and 5008, but unlike those cars – for now at least – the No.8 will come only as an electric car.

There’s a basic version that uses the same 73kWh battery as the E-3008, and that gets a range of up to 357 miles, with up to 260hp from the single electric motor. However, there’s a No.8 with a bigger 98kWh battery and a massive 469-mile range — helped by the superior aerodynamics of that low roof.

You get fast(ish) charging, as the No.8 can accept up to 160kW of DC fast-charging power, but that’s still some way behind the 200kW offered by BMW and the 270kW of Audi.

We’ll update this review with detailed impressions once we’ve been hands-on with the car. If you can’t wait that long, you can check out the latest DS No.8 deals, as well as DS No.8 lease deals on Carwow. You can also browse the latest used DS models from our network of trusted dealers, and when it’s time to sell your current car, Carwow can help with that, too.

The long-range Peugeot E-3008 has a price of just under £50,000, so it makes that this slightly posher DS No.8 starts at just over £50,000. That makes the No.8 considerably more affordable than the BMW iX3, but with a longer range even in standard form. In fact, the only BMW electric model that can match the No.8’s long-range 469 miles is the bigger iX SUV, and that costs at least £25,000 more.

It’s a similar story for Mercedes, whose comparably sized EQB has a much shorter range, while the longer-ranged EQE SUV is much pricier. Audi is closer, though — a long-range version of the Q4 e-tron should be priced fairly close to the No.8, and while it won’t quite have the range of the big-battery version, it’s still pretty good and has a desirable Audi badge on the nose.