Peugeot iOn – or free holidays in the Seychelles?

The Peugeot iON - will cost you £500 a month

The Peugeot iOn will cost an eye-watering £498 a month to lease. Better to lease a Peugeot 107 and a free fortnight a year in the Seychelles

I know, we moan on about the pointlessness of producing family-sized electric cars and pretending that they will suit a family’s needs in the real world. But we do say that producing small, city cars with electric bits under the bonnet does make sense. And then we castigate Peugeot for making the Peugeot iOn an expensive statement. But it is.

The Peugeot iOn will cost you £498 a month on a four year lease. True, you will get servicing thrown in (whoopee!), but that is a huge amount of money for a little electric car. However you may try to justify it. Which, of course, Peugeot has.

You’ll save a fortune in fuel, they say. Which may well be true. They even did calculations for us (well, car journos are notoriously stupid). And they based the calculations on petrol at £5.17 a gallon and 30mpg. 30mpg?! Blimey, that doesn’t seem like a particularly comparable car to us.

So, although we’re not very bright, we thought we’d do our own calculations based on Peugeot’s very own city car – the Peugeot 107 (which we like a lot) – which, as near as makes no difference, averaged 60mpg in our less than frugally inclined hands. Much more realistic.

So let’s assume 6k miles a year. Unlike Peugeot – who used 10k a year as well as 30mpg – we don’t believe the average city dweller drives 10k a year. And it makes it easier for our feeble minds to work out – 100 gallons a year costs £517. About £40 a month.

Now Peugeot throw in a pile of other costs the iOn will ‘avoid’, including London Congestion charging (£1700 a year) and Car Parking Charges (£2,000 a year) which Peugeot says are real savings. Maybe, if you work in central London and park on the street without a residents’ permit. Otherwise…

So, we reckon that the actual saving is less than £500 a year. Let’s be generous and double that so we average out those congestion charge savings and car parking charges across the country. That’s £85 a month saved by driving the iOn.

A Peugeot 107 Hatchback 1.0 Urban 5dr 2-Tronic on lease costs around £150 a month. Add in the £85 a month from above and you have a cost per month of £235.00. A saving, we reckon, of £3,156 a year. Or a couple of weeks in the Seychelles a year for the whole family.

Tough decision.