Its departure leaves mixed feelings about the car itself and life with a PHEV generally
LUC LACEY
FINAL REPORT
MILEAGE 11,697
WHY WE RAN IT
To find out how relaxed it can make you feel about a UK charging network that has so few places for a PHEV to plug in
It’s funny how your relationship with a car ebbs and flows as you use it. So it has been with our C5 Aircross, which has just departed for good.
During daily driving – just living with the car, using it for work – how I felt about it changed quite a lot from one day to the next. I started out feeling quite positive about its Citroën-trademark quirkiness but, with experience, found plenty of little faults in its driving experience that, once identified, went on to irritate quite persistently. In what should feel a relaxing, enveloping car, they really stood out.
On other days, I just wondered if the C5 Aircross really suited me, as it’s clearly intended for more frequent home charging than I could give it. Then I’d do something memorable with the car, and my affection for it grew right back. Those longer trips, when its long-distance touring comfort and holiday practicality really came to the fore, were like pressing the reset button on my impressions of it.
I started this test three months ago genuinely interested to find out if a PHEV could work for someone like me in 2023. The C5 Aircross wasn’t my first, but it’s been a few years since I ran anything quite like it, during which time I’ve noticed the UK’s charging infrastructure expand quite a bit.
So could it? The short answer is: not really. And while that isn’t the car’s fault, it’s disappointing to reflect on. There are the PHEV’s benefit-in-kind tax advantages, of course. As a company car, it may be your only viable option with CO2-based tax as it is – assuming you can’t yet square the switch to an EV.
But the PHEV is supposed to be a bridging technology to an EV, something easier to commit to. Funny thing is, a fully electric car would have been a lot easier for me to charge. Unable as I am to charge at home, I went looking for public charging options plenty of times during lunch breaks on photoshoots and at destinations – but I managed to plug in only once. It was common to find brand-new DC rapid-charging stations for EVs, but the C5 Aircross, like most PHEVs, isn’t compatible with them.
So it was my lot to watch the fuel economy slowly decline during the course of my test – to 32.6mpg overall. Is that acceptable in a good-sized family car, when a diesel might have returned 30% or even 40% better? I’m not convinced. Accounting for the
