Citroën C5 Aircross Hybrid 2021 long-term review Car News

And for what it’s worth, you can get them – with nappa leather upholstery – as options for £ 1,770. Speaking of options, our car doesn’t have a lot of them. There’s the Pearl White pearl paint (£ 720) and a black exterior pack (£ 300), which gets those alloys, roof and mirror housings painted, well, black. That’s it. I think it looks pretty neat.

Underneath the quirky but rather charming exterior is the same EMP2 platform that underlies everything from the DS 7 Crossback to the Vauxhall Vivaro. Its suspension is, at first glance, fairly conventional, with MacPherson struts up front and a multi-link arrangement in the rear. Slightly less conventional are the progressive hydraulic cushions – a pair of hydraulic stops mounted on each strut that supposedly dampen the effect of rebound and allow smoother suspension tuning. We will assess their effectiveness in due course.

The powertrain, meanwhile, is shared with the Peugeot 508 Hybrid. It has a 1.6-liter, 178 hp four-cylinder turbo petrol engine and a 107 hp electric motor housed in the eight-speed gearbox, which combine to endow the great Citroën with power. 222 hp system. The lithium-ion drive battery is more important, however, because, you know, that’s effectively what gives this model its appealing green credentials on paper.

It has a gross capacity of 13.2 kWh and offers a claimed range of between 33 and 40 miles, according to WLTP test procedures. Plug it into a 7kW charger and it will be recharged in under two hours. This also translates into the promise of fantastic fuel consumption figures: officially you can expect 222.3 mpg, but you’ll likely see the Covid-19 completely vanish before it reaches those kind of dizzying heights.

Although my apartment in West London has off-street parking, I do not have access to a wall-mounted charging station at home. And because I’m renting, I won’t pay to install one either. There are, however, two streetlight chargers on my route and a few other public chargers within a five-minute walk, so I should be able to plug the car in quite easily and reliably.

What will be interesting to find out during this long-term test, however, is whether the fuel savings that come with being able to run on electricity will be worth the cost of hooking up. I’m not quite sure they will be.