There’s something inherently romantic about the French approach to travel. Not the sort that involves cramped budget flights or motorway service sandwiches, but the elegant, unhurried sort — the Art of Travel, as DS Automobiles likes to call it. And with the new DS N°8, the brand wants to prove that range anxiety can finally be filed under “obsolete technology,” right next to dial-up modems and diesel hatchbacks.
So, what happens when you point an electric luxury saloon from Paris towards the Atlantic coast — and deliberately avoid the autoroutes? You get a journey that sounds like a postcard and reads like a manifesto.
Two DS N°8 Étoile FWD Long Range prototypes set off from Vélizy, home of the DS Design Studio, bound for Biscarrosse — a charming seaside town known for its pine forests and lakes. The catch? They weren’t allowed to plug in along the way. No DC chargers, no coffee-stop top-ups. Just 750 kilometres of real French countryside, national roads, and small-town roundabouts.
And when they arrived? Each car still had over 50 kilometres of range left in the tank — or rather, in the 97.2 kWh battery, built by Automotive Cells Company in Billy-Berclau. That’s a total theoretical range of 800 kilometres.
Let that sink in. Eight hundred kilometres. From an electric car.
Real Roads, Real Results
This wasn’t a cherry-picked lab test at 23°C and feather-light throttle inputs. The DS team drove through Beauce and Sologne, skirted Poitiers and Angoulême, then brushed past Bordeaux before finally rolling into Les Landes. The weather swung from a crisp 12°C morning to a mild 19°C afternoon, and the average speed was a distinctly human 54 km/h — traffic lights, tractors, and all.
Despite those less-than-ideal conditions, the DS N°8 averaged just 11.7 kWh/100 km, outclassing even its own WLTP rating of 12.9. It’s the kind of number that’d make a Tesla engineer raise an eyebrow and an Audi exec quietly weep into his spreadsheets.
The French Touch
The magic lies in the numbers — and the nationalism. The battery is French. The electric motor, built in Trémery. The design, of course, conceived in Paris. Together, they form a technological ecosystem that DS hopes will re-establish French engineering as a world benchmark. The 97.2 kWh pack’s energy density of 264 Wh/kg puts it right among the elite of the EV world — without the exotic price tag or Silicon Valley smugness.
And while the tech is serious, the experience remains distinctly DS: poised, refined, and quietly charismatic. With a drag coefficient of 0.24, the N°8 slices through the air with aerodynamic grace, while the interior promises the kind of hushed, jewel-like atmosphere you’d expect from a Parisian atelier.
A Game-Changer, or Just a Gentle Revolution?
DS CEO Xavier Peugeot puts it bluntly: “It’s no longer the battery that requires you to stop for charging.” It’s a bold statement — one that turns the EV narrative on its head. The DS N°8 doesn’t want to be a car you plan trips around; it wants to be a car you just drive.
In the real world, that means cross-country jaunts without range planning spreadsheets, spontaneous detours without the dreaded “Battery Low” warning, and maybe — just maybe — the rebirth of the grand European road trip, this time with zero tailpipe guilt.
So yes, the DS N°8 is more than just another electric saloon. It’s a rolling argument that luxury in the EV era isn’t about acceleration figures or touchscreen acreage — it’s about freedom. And in that sense, this French contender might just be the most liberté, égalité, mobilité car on sale.
Source: Stellantis