The extraordinary new Inception concept “heralds a new era” for future Peugeot electric cars, which will make dramatic technological leaps from and feature radically different designs to the company’s current offerings.
Revealed at CES in Las Vegas (unusually for Peugeot, which left the US market in 1991), the Inception is the first concept from recently appointed design boss Matthias Hossann.
It provides a mission of intent for the French brand’s future production vehicles, which will be conceived according to three key principles: allure, emotion and excellence. It will launch five new EVs in the next two years and go all-electric in Europe by 2030.
Hossann told Autocar recently that upcoming Peugeot cars will take the lead from the new Peugeot 408 saloon-SUV in “challenging conventional silhouettes”, and certainly the Inception bears no obvious relation to anything in the current Peugeot stable.
Sitting low to the ground (its roof stands just 1340mm tall) and having a sharp, fastback-style silhouette, it’s closest in form to the Peugeot 508 saloon, but it’s substantially larger, measuring 5000mm long by 2100mm wide.
Its “generous” footprint, Peugeot said, highlights the flexibility of the new-era architecture that will underpin future production cars: the new STLA modular platform being rolled out to Peugeot and its Stellantis sibling brands from the middle of this decade.
The Inception rides on the Large version of this platform (there will also be Small, Medium and Frame variants to suit different segments), which in practice will be used for the biggest, fastest and most luxurious passenger cars in the Stellantis portfolio.
Here it houses a 100kWh battery that’s claimed to be capable of 4.97 miles per kWh for a total range of 500 miles – far greater than any current Stellantis production EV.
Plus, being equipped with 800V charging hardware, it can top up at a rate of nearly 19 miles per minute, or more than 90 miles in five minutes. Notably, Peugeot claims it can do this using induction technology, negating the need for a cable – although this is a feature not yet confirmed for production cars.