Peugeot and Citroen Promise 450 km (280 Miles) Electric Vehicle in 2019

A- A+

The PSA Group (made up of the three French brands of Peugeot, Citroen, and DS) has been trying to find its place in the automotive industry for the past few years.

After a long period in which Citroen, in particular, was synonym with innovation, the marque that gave us the fabulous original DS and other gems found itself increasingly irrelevant on the market. Its cars did not offer anything distinctive to the clients, so sales started to decline. At one point, it attempted a move towards the premium segment, but that proved to be a wrong decision as well, so now it's back at doing perky French cars that offer a lot of features for the money.

To cater for the more pretentious customers, Citroen created the stand-alone DS brand, much like Hyundai did with Genesis last year. However, it wasn't met with that much success so its activity now relies mostly on the Chinese market. As for Peugeot, it followed a somewhat similar route, with the new 308 and 208 models looking very promi sing. Not to mention the recently announced 3008, which fortunately has absolutely nothing to do with the current model bearing that name.

Yesterday, though, the PSA Groupe gave us another idea of where its brands are going by introducing a new platform dedicated exclusively to electric vehicles. This new architecture that's based on the Common Modular Platform was developed together with Dongfeng Motors and is now called the Electric Common Modular Platform, or e-CMP.

According to the PSA Group, it will be able to offer up to 450 km (280 miles) of electric range coupled with ultra-fast charging solutions that can provide the vehicle with 12 km (7.5 miles) per one minute of charging. The group says that four models will be introduced to the market by 2021, with the first coming as soon as 2019. The e-CMP can support various types of vehicles including city cars, core sedans and even compact SUVs or crossovers

As we've previously reported, the PSA Group also plans t o release seven plug-in hybrid models that will use the EMP2 architecture. The PHEVs will be introduced during the same time frame as the EVs and will include larger vehicles such as SUVs and CUVs. The French manufacturer estimates that the vehicles will have a maximum electric range of 60 km (38 miles) and a charging time as short as two hours for a complete cycle.

Source: Peugeot and Citroen Promise 450 km (280 Miles) Electric Vehicle in 2019