DS No 8 review

Beware overdoing it as expensive French cars have a habit of depreciating like April snow. Better yet, swerve the risk and lease.

That said, the front-drive Pallas spec feels very complete and at £50,790, decent value. You get heated seats and steering wheel, the detailed colour HUD, and full connected navigation with route planning that works out your quickest pit strategy with live info on charger power and availability.

Then you can go two ways, each adding £4k. One is the long-range battery, for your 466 miles WLTP. The other is to stay with the basic 73.7kWh battery for 341 miles, but raise the spec to Etoile – that's the curtain-effect illuminated 'grille', plus a tech pack of the full motorway driving assist, plus pixel adaptive LED headlights and surround parking cameras.

The FWD Etoile with long-range pack is £59,290. Finally the twin-motor long range is £63,290.

The long-range one is good for about 330 miles even at UK motorway speed and much more if a significant part of the trip is slower roads.

One advantage of this massive battery is you will almost always be charging at home. You could drive 170 miles outbound on half a battery and 170 home without paying public charge prices. On a 9p/kWh night rate you'd do it all for under £9. If you had a real-world 250 mile pack, as many rivals do, you'd have to stop part-way home and add 100 miles, which would be £25 just for the public-charge bit, plus £7 for the home charge you first set off with. Never mind the annoyance of that stop.