Tag Archives: DS Automobiles

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DS’s Second Act: Can France’s Fashion-First Premium Brand Finally Break Through?

Back in 2014, over a quiet lunch in Paris, then-CEO Carlos Tavares offered a remarkably candid assessment of his newly emancipated DS brand. “Today DS is far away from the likes of Audi, but you need to start the dream,” he said. Competing with the Germans on their own turf, he argued, was a fool’s errand. Instead, DS would bottle the “French touch”—sophistication, couture-level flare, and that indefinable je ne sais quoi that lures British tourists across the Channel.

It was a compelling pitch. With Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Hermès dominating the world of luxury goods, why couldn’t France carve out a similar niche in premium automobiles? Avant-garde design, comfort over outright performance, and a level of service the Germans couldn’t match—that was the promise.

Fast-forward to 2025, and DS isn’t exactly giving those Germans insomnia.

The brand is now on its fourth CEO in ten years, registrations are down 21 percent year-to-date, and DS has never once broken the 50,000-unit barrier in Europe. China—once a major pillar of the strategy—has abandoned foreign luxury EVs in favor of domestic heroes.

Enter Xavier Peugeot, the new boss and a member of the founding Peugeot family. He’s tasked with turning DS from a stylish curiosity into a sustainable premium player—with a fraction of the firepower that Cupra, Volvo, or even Lexus can bring to bear.

The New DS, Chapter Two

The centerpiece of DS’s reboot is the new No.8, a pure-electric flagship crossover pitched as the brand’s long-overdue halo car. It sits atop a newly refreshed lineup that includes the No.4 (a facelifted DS 4) and a successor to the DS 7 arriving next year. The new naming scheme—No.4, No.8—borrows more from French fragrance bottles than German alphanumerics. That’s the point.

“There is a momentum,” Peugeot insists, speaking to investors at the British Motor Museum. Three launches in 18 months don’t sound like much unless you’re DS, which hasn’t released an all-new model since 2021. The delays are glaring: the pure-electric DS 4, for instance, arrives more than a year late.

Still, Peugeot is bullish. “DS is a profitable brand,” he says, rejecting rumors that Stellantis—now minus Tavares—might shutter an underperformer in a crowded stable of 14 marques. With premium cars representing 40 percent of Europe’s profits, Stellantis is reluctant to abandon its only genuine upmarket play.

From Faux-Audi to French Flair

One thing DS finally seems to have nailed is design confidence.

The 2017 DS 7 Crossback tried to mimic Audi—an odd choice for a brand built on French identity. It dressed like Ingolstadt, only softer around the edges, with creative interiors that felt fragile and drivetrains that rarely inspired.

The new No.8 is different. Bold, lit-from-within grille. Optional two-tone hood. Smooth, modernist surfaces. A roofline that slips away like a concept car’s. And for once, the interior quality lives up to the avant-garde promise. Reviews call the ride comfort “exceptional” and the cabin “brilliant.”

It took a decade, but DS finally delivered something genuinely distinctive.

Range? DS claims 465 miles, enough to cruise from Birmingham to Edinburgh without a recharge. In today’s EV market, that matters.

The Real Problem: Visibility

DS’s European sales are minuscule—Alfa Romeo and Lexus each outsell it more than two-to-one. Dealer coverage is thin. Awareness is weaker still. Even in the UK, DS retailers registered just 1,152 cars in 2024.

“We’ve got a job to do in breaking through,” admits UK boss Jules Tilstone. Low residual values have also crippled lease competitiveness—something the No.8 aims to fix with “class-leading” used projections.

The challenge isn’t simply being premium. It’s being relevant.

Cupra: The Comparison DS Doesn’t Want

If you want a masterclass in brand building, look at Cupra.

In 2020, the fledgling Spaniards sold a third of DS’s volume. Four years later, they sell six times more. Why? Product. Positioning. Momentum.

The Cupra Formentor hit the heart of Europe’s market: mid-size, sporty-ish crossover with a jacked-up wagon profile, matte paints, and copper accents. It looked different without being niche. It drove with intent. It appealed to buyers who wanted to feel youthful—even if they weren’t.

Cupra built an ecosystem: “City Garages” hosting gigs and DJ nights, a Barcelona FC connection, padel sponsorships, a sense of belonging. CEO Markus Haupt calls it a “tribe.” Customers call it cool.

DS, by contrast, has always aimed at traditional luxury—a harder hill to climb without heritage, or the engines to back it.

So… Can DS Make It?

Peugeot says DS’s best year—55,000 units—must become the floor, not the ceiling. He won’t commit to tripling sales; he jokes we’d call him crazy. But he stresses that DS is a “20–30-year story,” echoing Tavares’s decade-old mantra.

The next three years will matter more than the last ten.

The No.8 is the closest DS has come to a breakthrough car: stylish, comfortable, long-range, and properly French. It finally gives the brand a shot at the visibility it has lacked since launch.

But DS is still fighting in one of the most competitive arenas in the global auto market—against German titans, Chinese EV disruptors, and upstarts like Cupra that have mastered the art of cultural cool.

France knows how to make luxury. The question is whether enough people want that luxury on four wheels, wrapped in a silhouette they rarely see on the road.

DS dreams big. Now it needs customers who will dream with it.

News

Britain’s Dealer Happiness Index: Who’s Winning, Who’s Losing, and Who Should Be Worried

If you really want the truth about a car brand, don’t ask the marketing department. Don’t ask the influencers. And definitely don’t ask the guy in the pub who once drove a diesel Passat “that pulled like a train.”

Ask the people who live and die by the product: the franchised dealers.

This year, Britain’s retail networks have spoken—loudly, candidly, and sometimes with a tone that suggests they’d rather be anywhere else. Their collective verdict paints a surprisingly dramatic picture of who’s thriving, who’s stumbling, and who might need to start thinking about pulling the eject handle.

The Big Winners: Lexus Leads, Kia Surges, BYD Impresses

According to the dealer rankings, Lexus, Kia, BYD, Omoda, Suzuki, and BMW top the leaderboard in that exact order. It’s a group that blends dependable luxury (Lexus), relentlessly consistent value (Kia), and China’s fast-moving electric juggernaut (BYD) with newer disruptors like Omoda.

These are the brands whose dealers sleep easier at night. They like the product. They like the margins. They like the customers walking through the door. And, crucially, they like the support they get from HQ.

The Basement Dwellers: DS Hits Rock Bottom

At the sharp end of misery, the worst-performing brands are Alfa Romeo, Fiat, SEAT, Abarth, Citroën, and at the absolute bottom—DS.

Dealer grumbling here covers everything from profit margins to warranties to product perception. The French premium experiment seems to be running out of goodwill. One could imagine Stellantis executives staring at these results and wondering how much longer DS can cling to the UK market.

Margin Madness: Kia, Mercedes, and Toyota Score; Land Rover Stumbles

Profit margins are the lifeblood of a dealer’s survival. According to the survey:

  • Best new-vehicle margins: Kia, Mercedes, Toyota
  • Worst: Audi, Ford, and dead-last Land Rover

Yes, you read that right—Audi dealers, purveyors of high-priced premium metal, say their profits are among the weakest in the country. That’s like a Michelin-star chef complaining the kitchen ran out of salt.

Something’s not adding up behind the four rings.

Product Value: Omoda and Dacia Thrill, Audi and DS Deflate

“Value” is often code for “Customers leave happy and we don’t have to beg them to buy.” Dealers claim:

  • Most satisfied with product value: Omoda, Kia, Dacia
  • Least satisfied: DS, SEAT, Audi

Again, Audi finds itself on the wrong side of dealer sentiment. The brand moves high volumes and commands premium prices, yet retailers insist the value proposition isn’t landing. Whether that’s pricing, equipment, or perceived quality, the frontline feedback is unambiguous.

EV Satisfaction: BYD, Kia, Renault Shine; Nissan Tanks

This may be the most startling result of all.

  • Strongest approval for EV lineup: BYD, Kia, Renault
  • Weakest: SEAT, Nissan, Mazda

Nissan’s inclusion here is perplexing. This is the brand that practically invented the mainstream EV with the Leaf, pioneered affordable electrification, and is gearing up for a new British-built Leaf and Juke. And yet its retailers sound more apprehensive than enthusiastic.

BYD, meanwhile, earns praise not only for its EVs but also for the frequency of its new model introductions. In dealer-speak, that’s code for “We always have something fresh to sell.”

Support Matters: Lexus Dominates, Citroën Falters

Dealers say Lexus is unbeatable in tech support and parts availability—a reputation the brand has quietly cultivated for decades.
At the other end, Citroën sits last, a position no network wants to see next to its name.

Group Patterns: VW Group Chaos, Stellantis Struggles

There’s a pattern emerging that’s difficult to ignore:

  • VW and Skoda: Doing well
  • Audi, Cupra, SEAT: Lagging badly

This internal inconsistency mirrors the chaos of the wider Stellantis empire, where:

  • Jeep, Peugeot, Vauxhall dealers: Generally content
  • Fiat, Citroën, DS, Abarth: Deeply unhappy

For DS and Abarth in particular, the writing on the wall is getting hard to miss. The UK market may simply not be buying the dream.

So What Does This Mean for Buyers?

Behind every score is a signal: how easy a brand is to own, how well-supported its cars are, and how stable the buying experience will be over time.

If you want predictable satisfaction and a well-oiled dealership experience, Lexus, Kia, and BYD look like the safest bets.

If you prefer to avoid frustration, shrinking dealer faith, or slow support networks… well, the bottom of the list makes its own argument.

The dealers have spoken. Now it’s your move.

Source: Auto Express

News

750 km On a Single Charge: DS N°8 Redefines the Art of Travel

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