DS9 E-Tense: travel comfortably and safely on the new French hybrid sedan

DS9 E-Tense: travel comfortably and safely on the new French hybrid sedan

DS9 E-Tense

The house of the Goddess has separated from the first Citroen mother since 2015, after the launch of numerous cars including SUV (DS7) and crossover (DS3), the time has come to bite into the luxury sedan segment. How? Thanks to a unique offer, launched in February, DS9 in fact, ready to make us dream - and travel - in first class. The premium brand focuses on style, elegance, technology, safety and ecology, being available for the DS9 only a model with a hybrid electric petrol engine. A choice for the benefit of the environment and consumption.

Post-production: Astuce Productions 493 cm long, 185 cm wide and 146 cm high: dimensions are also important, you can see that the the car wants to establish itself on the road, a result achieved also thanks to a lot of onboard technology. First are the DS Active Scan Suspension, that is the electronically controlled suspensions connected to a front camera to prevent any roughness on the ground and prepare for any eventuality, as well as better copying the road guaranteeing an estate always at the highest levels.

Source: Luxury Pret-à-Porter The interior is as sumptuous as the DS Automobiles tradition dictates, with Nappa leather upholstery and bezels scattered throughout the cabin. In short, a triumph of opulence, which knows how to rock the occupants in a refined way.

There is no shortage of safety systems, the latest generation ADAS. We start from the adaptive LED headlights DS Active Led Vision, up to a sort of night vision with DS Night Vision, a system that uses an infrared camera to project the detected images on the dashboard, signaling the dangers with colors from yellow to red depending on the level of danger assumed by the system for the elements detected on the carriageway. In an emergency, it is able to take the initiative and brake on its own if no response from the driver is detected. Then there are also the classic systems such as adaptive cruise control, driver fatigue warning, and many others.

For the moment, it will come only in a hybrid version, with a 225 HP engine capable of traveling about 40-50 kilometers in electric according to the WLTP cycle. In short, not only beautiful to look at, but also promises to be beautiful to drive!

If you are a fan of the DS brand you might like this cap





DS9 review: this fine French saloon has style et luxe, but who will buy it?

Britain’s car makers all met recently at the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) and decided that, in the circumstances, old-fashioned car launches should be a thing of the past. No more posh hotels and fine dining. After all, it was claimed, “proper” motoring journalists never asked for these things and were happy to simply turn up, have a brew and a biscuit with the engineers, grab a set of sanitised ignition keys and tear off; this business is, after all, all about the cars.


So last week I drove to a car launch based at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, the Raymond Blanc-founded hotel in Oxfordshire, with a reputation for such superlative gastronomy that there’s a four-month waiting list for lunch. How so?


DS isn’t as other car marques, you see. This six-year-old Peugeot-Citroën-created firm evokes French design, fashion and luxury goods as inspiration. 


Its new DS9 saloon, it posits, isn’t about car aficionados or badge snobs and it’s certainly not for those who know that, like all DS models, this new saloon is underpinned by more humble chassis and drivetrains than its starting price would indicate. 


DS9 - tested May 2021

The lines are conservative so the detailing, including DS's signature lozenge-shaped themes, stands out even more

Which, in the case of the DS9 is £40,615 – a seemingly daft slip given the £40,000 threshold for the UK luxury car tax. 


You need to have a few strings to your bow when you’re launching a premium badge in Europe and offering a decent lunch is one of them.

Who doesn’t want a German saloon?

Premium (whatever that means) is a heavily defended hill that non-German car makers have singularly failed to take. The triumvirate of Audi, BMW and Mercedes has seen off Nissan’s Infiniti and Saab, with Alfa Romeo, Lancia and Jaguar retiring from the front line and Lexus only marginally profitable. Yet PSA Peugeot-Citroën (now part of the Stellantis Group) continues to charge the guns.


DS9 - tested May 2021

The interior is nicely executed and young, luxury-loving audience might love it

We have been here before, of course. Remember Renault’s 25 and Safrane, Citroën’s XM, C5 and C6, or a succession of Peugeot large saloons, known as Énarque taxis after the French civil servants who were inevitably seen in them and seemed to constitute the Peugeot’s main market?


Yet the idea that some buyers, albeit a small number, simply don’t want a big German saloon is a tempting one. Get the costs right, turbocharge the design and marketing and sell to wealthy younger luxury-loving folk who aren’t that interested in cars or history (think Chinese), and you might just about crack it. The shiny horse’s knee on the reproduction Girardon statue in the entrance to the casino in Monte Carlo worn smooth by the touch of superstitious gamblers bears similar witness to hope against experience...

What’s in a name?

The DS brand is, of course, named after Flaminio Bertoni and André Lefèbvre’s epochal Citroën DS or déesse (goddess) launched in 1955. Should PSA have done this? You might see this as a garish cash-in or canny marque curatorship, although to its credit PSA claims that DS has outsold Lexus in Europe and is making a profit.


Not on this car, I’ll be bound. The lines are conservative, and the proportions on a 2.9-metre wheelbase are pleasing, but the details look as though they’ve been fired at the bodywork with a blunderbuss. 


DS9 - tested May 2021


The radiator grille looks as though it is made up of gothic sea shells, the extraordinary bonnet embellisher looks inspired by the foil on Victor Kiam’s Remington electric razor and the “guillocharge” light housings seem created out of scaly lizard skin.

Under the skin

There are no diesels, just a transverse-mounted petrol turbo engine based on the 1.6-litre four cylinder developed with BMW and a plug-in hybrid version of the same, which shares the driving duties with an 80kW(109bhp)/236lb ft electric motor driven with an 11.9kWh lithium-ion battery under the floor. 


A more powerful 4x4 version arrives by the end of this year. The gearbox is an Aisin eight-speed torque converter automatic driving the front wheels.


DS9 - tested May 2021


The car is based on the group’s EMP II chassis platform and is the largest car using this chassis. Suspension consists of front MacPherson struts with a multi-link independent rear. There’s also DS’s semi-active suspension, which scans the road ahead recognising potholes and bumps and slackens the damping in bump or rebound where appropriate to soften the car’s passage; it’s a £1,000 extra on the Performance Line + model only. You can also specify a semi-self-driving mode for £700 and autonomous parking for the same amount.


There are two trim levels: Performance Line + and the more luxurious Rivoli +, with Puretec and E-Tense versions of each and a further £3,000 Opera trim level for the Rivoli cars, which introduces special leather finishes and heated rear seats. Our test cars were a mash-up of everything so you’d need to check carefully exactly what you’re getting – and spending.

Alluring interior

Step inside and your eyes flick around like a kid’s in a sweet shop. There’s so much clamouring for your attention, each piece with its own design striations and materials. It’s nicely executed, but from the BRM clock (Bernard Richards Manufacture) in the facia centre, the Focal stereo speakers in the doors with their own fretwork grilles, the door-panel pinhead stitching (industrialised by DS), the Alcantara headlining and that lance-corporal’s stripe down the bonnet; you can’t help wishing that someone had cried “enough” during the planning stages.


DS9 - tested May 2021


The effect is not very automotive, in fact if it weren’t for the steering wheel and gear lever there’s nothing to connect it with a car at all, which is a very old-fashioned way of creating interiors that goes back before the Second World War to Bugatti, Figoni et Falaschi, Saoutchik and other great French car makers and carrossiers. 


It’s not very practical, either, with the diamond-like patterns on the centre console making it quite difficult to identify which button is which and the barrel controls also difficult to master.


The driving position feels pretty good once you’ve adjusted the manual steering column for reach and rake, although the pedal box on the left-hand-drive car was small and I found myself driving with the edge of my shoe.


In the back there’s head and leg room to spare, though not a lot of toys for the fashion/technology obsessed to play with. The boot is 510 litres, which is a decent size, but not if you’re loading up with Louis Vuitton cases.


DS9 - tested May 2021


There are some PSA Group function switches down by your knee and while the central touchscreen has unique DS graphics, it’s basically the same unit you’ll find on other models from the Group and despite the row of buttons underneath for more commonly used features, you still find yourself prodding and poking at the glass rather too much.

On the road

From the off, the bodyshell feels quite stiff, which is a good place to start and quite difficult to achieve with a large four-door saloon. I started in EV mode to see how far the car would travel and saw a peak fuel consumption of 76.5mpg for 28 miles whereupon the EV drive reverted to hybrid, where electric and petrol power are mixed for a best economy. Zeroing the trip then saw an average fuel consumption of about 40mpg, which is reasonably impressive for a 1.83-tonne large saloon.


The Valvetronic 1.6-litre engine is a lovely unit, but it definitely needs the help of the electric motor to get the car moving with any degree of alacrity and peace and quiet. 


With all guns blazing, the two give brisk rather than scintillating performance and it can feel quite busy down in the engine room at times, especially if you’re going for an overtake. 


DS9 - tested May 2021


You can manually change gear with paddles behind the steering wheel, but there’s a lot going on behind there, with a separate cruise-control stalk plus wipers and headlamp/indicator stalks, so at times you end up grappling around as if fighting a giant cuttlefish in the dark.


On Oxfordshire’s not brilliantly maintained roads, the immediate sense is of ride refinement, but there is a low-level clattering coming up from the 19-inch tyres even if it doesn’t disturb the body over-much. 


With the drive mode in Comfort where the active scanning works, the DS9 rides like a magic carpet – you can feel the bumps through the steering, but it’s a lot harder to detect them through the seat of your pants. Switch into Sport and the ride is just too harsh, though possibly what you want in the unlikely event you take your DS9 for a couple of fast laps of the Nordschleife at the Nürburgring; otherwise forget it.


DS9 - tested May 2021


The car feels long, but not particularly wide, with that bonnet stripe and the curved front wings giving a sense of position so even this left-hand-drive car felt easy to place on the road. The windscreen pillars are very thick, but visibility to the front and sides is good and, with long rear door glass and quarter lights, you can see over the shoulder as well, which helps supplement the standard blind-spot detection system.


In the throwing-it-around stakes, the DS9 is better than it has any right to be and you can imagine it speeding down a tree-lined Route Nationale in the moonlight for a secret assignation, but for sheer dynamics a Mercedes-AMG E-class or BMW M Sport 5-series would eat it alive, even a 508 Peugeot Sport Engineered is a finer driving machine and a better looker, though it costs £53,995.  

Conclusion

I suspect this car isn’t aimed at me and that’s fine. A more relevant question seems to be exactly who it is aimed at, and will they like it? 


DS9 - tested May 2021


I think its garish, blingy and not as good as the cars which share its underpinnings. And even if you don’t want a German saloon, there’s Jaguar’s recently revamped XF, Alfa Romeo’s fabulous Giulia and, damn it, I even found a decent Saab 9000 Aero Viggen on the web for £8,000 and in that you really would be “arriving” at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons.


As for the lunch, we made our excuses and left before the hors d’oeuvres, so you’ll need to try that particular delight for yourselves. Get an order in now and you’ll be eating in September – I’ll wager you could get your hands on a DS9 before then…

The facts

DS9 E-Tense 225 PHEV


TESTED 1,598cc four-cylinder turbo petrol engine with 11.9kWh lithium-ion battery and electric motor, eight-speed automatic gearbox, front-wheel drive


PRICE/ON SALE from £44,615 (£46,100 as tested in E-Tense Performance + trim)/now (first deliveries in the autumn)


POWER/TORQUE


Engine: 178bhp @ 6,000/221lb ft @ 3,000rpm


Motor: 80kW (109bhp)/236lb ft


Total output: 222bhp/265lb ft


TOP SPEED 149mph


ACCELERATION 0-62mph in 8.3sec


FUEL ECONOMY 176.6mpg WLTP (High), 72mpg on test in battery mode, 44.2mpg when battery drained


RECHARGE TIME 1.45 hours on a 7.4kW household wallbox


EV RANGE 34 miles


CO2 EMISSIONS 35g/km


VED £0 first year, £480 next five years, then £145


VERDICT Garish and big, and not a patch on the dynamics of the rivals but better than it has a right to be. The comfort-enhancing road-scanning system works brilliantly however and there is something quite attractive about the overstuffed feeling of this car. It feels strangely reminiscent of the fifth-generation Cadillac Seville, the first right-hand-drive Caddy to come to the UK. It was pretty dreadful, but today is regarded a minor classic.


TELEGRAPH RATING Three stars out of five 

The rivals

BMW 5303 M Sport Saloon, from £52,325


A 292bhp PHEV drivetrain with rear-wheel drive, or 4x4 at £54,325, with great dynamics and an understated but high-quality interior. One of the greatest-ever sporting saloons, but its sheer ubiquity means not everyone wants one.


Mercedes E 300 e saloon, from £46,230


Yes, it’s a Stuttgart taxi, but the E-class is probably the most complete all-rounder in this, erm, class. There’s much to like in this PHEV petrol model (there’s a diesel PHEV, too) including an arguably more rounded ride/handling balance than the BMW, but some think it’s too blingy.


Volvo S90 Recharge, from £56,100


There’s something quite irritating about this Chinese-owned Swedish company, not the least is its continual squawking about how terrible combustion cars are for the world while it’s selling all it can at really high prices. The S90, nevertheless, is a lovely machine, different from the Germans, with a great interior and a sensible-shoes combination of ride and handling. But it costs, and how.


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