Peugeot Boxer Review 2025: Price, specs & load capacity

If you need a van that majors on space, practicality and versatility, then the Peugeot Boxer is definitely worth considering. With a broad range of choices over length, height and bodystyle, plus a wide variety of at-source customisation options available, you should be able to specify the perfect Boxer for your business. You also have the choice of diesel or fully electric powertrains.

That choice might well be a bit difficult, because the Boxer is available in a vast variety of different forms to suit a wide range of business needs.

When choosing, we’d advise keeping a couple of things in mind. Go for a van that’s as small as you can get away with, because that will keep purchase prices and running costs to a minimum. However, be sure not to overdo it, because you could end up with a van that’s too small for your needs: make sure there’s enough space for you to be able to conduct your business quickly, easily and efficiently.

If your work takes you far and wide, you’ll have no choice other than to go for one of the diesels. If, however, your work is limited exclusively to the local area, then choosing the all-electric version could earn you some very useful savings on running costs, although buying it in the first place will be more expensive.

There are almost two distinct classes in the large van category, with the Boxer closest in style and function to the likes of the with which it shares many of its parts. The equally ageing Renault Master and its siblings – the Nissan NV400 and Vauxhall Movano – are also worth considering as basic workhorses.

The more modern Ford Transit, Mercedes-Benz Sprinter and the Volkswagen Crafter all offer a greater degree of refinement and technology.

If you fancy a Boxer but can’t find one in the form you want at a price you like, then you do have other options. That’s because there are several other vans that are all but identical to the Boxer, both mechanically and in terms of their appearance. These are the Fiat Ducato, Citroen Relay and Vauxhall Movano, all of which are built by other brands from within the huge Stellantis stable that owns and operates Peugeot.

The large van market certainly isn’t limited to just these brands, though. There are lots of rivals besides, and these include the full-size Ford Transit, Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, Renault Master, Nissan Interstar, Volkswagen Crafter and Iveco Daily.

The Peugeot Boxer is designed to be a hard-working vehicle, and as such, its interior finish is geared far more towards utility and durability than it is to tactility. The hard plastic surfaces on show are wipe-clean and will effectively repel the effects of a misplaced muddy boot without damage. Sure, they won’t be a sensory feast for the eyes and fingertips, but that’s not what’s important here. And in fact, a few of the surfaces have a texture that makes them look a wee bit more inviting than they actually are. The various buttons and switches work in a pleasantly slick way, too.

The Boxer has been on sale for so many years now that it’ll come as little surprise that there’s been lots of change over that period in the makeup of its infotainment system. Early entry-level examples came with just an FM/AM/DAB radio, Bluetooth and a USB port, while higher-end versions got a five-inch touchscreen with integrated navigation. We never got to experience either system, though.

Buy a brand new Boxer today, and the standard infotainment system you get depends on whether you buy the diesel-powered version of the electric one. The most basic setup you get is in the diesel, which has analogue dials behind the steering wheel and a five-inch central infotainment touchscreen with DAB, Bluetooth, and a USB port. Choose the EV, meanwhile, and your central screen is upgraded to a seven-inch item, while those analogue dials are replaced by a seven-inch digital instrument screen behind the steering wheel.

We’ve not had the chance to experience either system, though, because all Boxers we’ve driven have been fitted with the optional infotainment upgrade that comes with either the Techno Plus Pack (diesel) or Techno Pack (EV). This upgrades the central screen to a 10-inch one, and adds the digital instrument panel, while your upgraded system also gets integrated navigation, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, additional USB ports, and wireless phone charging. The pack also throws in automatic climate control.

Compared with some of the super-complicated systems you see in many vehicles nowadays, this system feels pretty basic, despite the upgrades. However, that actually makes it easier to find and use most of the Boxer’s functions, so you’ll have very few complaints about ease of use.

The Boxer can be had in a vast variety of different forms to suit very diverse business needs. There are various different body configurations available, including panel van, chassis cab, double cab chassis and platform cab. It can be had in three different lengths (L2, L3 and L4), three different heights (H1, H2 and H3), and in two different Gross Vehicle Weight (GVW) options (3.5 tonnes and 4.25 tonnes). Look back a few years further in time, and even more length and GVW options were offered. However, these have since been discontinued and are too numerous to go into here.

In all versions of the modern-day panel van, the load width between the wheelarches is a little over 1.4 metres. Depending on what you choose regarding the height and length of your van, your load bay will be between 1.6 metres and 2.2 metres tall and between 3.1 metres and 4.1 metres long. In terms of load volume, even the smallest iteration (the L2 H1) can pack in 10 cubic metres of stuff, while the biggest version (the L4 H3) has a whopping cargo capacity of 17 cubic metres.

If payload is more important to you than capacity, the precise permissible figure of your van will depend on its size and powertrain. Starting with the electric version, the very smallest version has a payload of just 710kg, but on all other e-Boxers, the figures sit between 1,385kg and 1,460kg.

The diesels are able to lug quite a bit more. The lowest payload figure you’ll get on one of these is 1,235kg, but 1,500kg is more like the norm within the diesel range, and the biggest figures stand at a whopping 2050kg.

For those who need to tow, the electric versions of the Boxer are rated to pull a braked trailer of up to 2,400kg. Towing weights range between 2,250kg and 3,000kg on the diesels, depending on the version.

All versions of the Boxer get twin doors on the back end, and these can open at up to 180 degrees to improve access. You also get a sliding door on the near side of the van as standard, while a second sliding door on the other side of the van can be added as an optional extra. Illumination of the load bay is standard-fit, and the floor of the load area is finished in bare metal.

The cabin has three seats arranged side-by-side, and because the vehicle is so wide, there’s enough space for three burly colleagues to travel in reasonable comfort.

The Boxer has been around for such a massively long time that it’s been offered with a vast variety of different engines over its long lifespan. Originally, it was offered with 2.2-litre diesels of varying outputs, but then in 2016, Peugeot switched to 2.0-litre units to comply with new emissions laws, before returning to 2.2s a few years later. However, we never got to try any of these early engines.

In the present day, most Boxers are powered by a 140PS 2.2-litre diesel engine. You can specify it with either a six-speed manual gearbox or an eight-speed automatic.

Most drivers will be perfectly fine settling for the manual. The engine has a pleasantly muscular feel, even at the very bottom of the rev range, so it builds speed briskly and easily without having to be worked to its limits. And if you do feel the need to apply more revs, the acceleration that arrives feels like it’s too much for comfort in a vehicle like the Boxer.

If the traffic in front of you slows up for any reason, the Boxer’s colossal size and weight mean that a downshift might well be needed in order to get you back up to speed again, but this is no hardship. The automatic transmission does make your life a little bit easier though, and it swaps ratios with decent smoothness. It also seems to do a good job of keeping the engine within its power band, but without over-revving it.

Another version of the 2.2 diesel with 180PS is also available, offered exclusively with the automatic gearbox. However, we haven’t had the chance to try it yet.

If you like the idea of the all-electric e-Boxer, early pre-2024 examples had a 120PS motor and a battery of either 37kWh or 75kWh. However, we never got to try these versions, either. 

With the Boxer’s 2024 facelift, though, the electric powertrain was completely overhauled, featuring a much larger 110kWh battery and a much more powerful 280PS electric motor with an even more generous 410Nm of instantly applied torque. Those are quite punchy figures by any standard, and even in an enormous, heavy machine like the e-Boxer, they’re enough to deliver properly sprightly performance.

You have three driving modes to choose from: Power, Normal and Eco. As you’d expect, Power mode gives you maximum acceleration at the expense of a bit of range, while Eco shifts the bias the opposite way. The vehicle defaults to Normal mode when you start it up, and you can switch things up or down from there.

If anything, Power mode is a bit too much. Whether you’re getting away from the mark or picking up speed on the move, prodding the accelerator results in a really strong surge of forward momentum that, in a vehicle as massive and as unwieldy as the Boxer, actually feels slightly unnerving. Regardless of work pressures, we can’t see too many Boxer drivers being in that much of a hurry.

You’re better off sticking with Normal mode. Your off-the-mark acceleration is a fraction more subdued but still really strong, while your on-the-move acceleration is a little more blunted still, but again, you still have more performance on tap than you’ll know what to do with.

In Eco, the e-Boxer feels just as brisk when pulling away as it does in Normal, but your on-the-move pickup is throttled back further, and your top speed is limited to 56mph. Even in this mode, though, you’ll feel like the e-Boxer has more than enough go for most driving situations.

When the e-Boxer was first introduced, it was available with two choices of battery, a 37kWh one and a 75kWh one. The former had a frankly pathetic range of just 74 miles, according to official WLTP figures, while the latter put in a figure of 154 miles, which is still no great shakes.

During the 2024 facelift, however, the electric powertrain was replaced by a completely different one that not only had a much more powerful electric motor, but also a far bigger 110kWh battery. This boosted the range up to a much more respectable 263 miles. In every case, though, remember that the range you’re likely to get in the real world will be considerably less, especially if it’s cold or you’re doing a lot of high-speed motorway miles. That makes the old short-range model even more pointless

Most EVs are considerably quieter than their combustion-engined counterparts, and so is the case with the Boxer. You barely hear the electric motor going about its work at any point, while the diesel engine emits an old-school rumble pretty much all the time. This rumble can get rather loud if you apply lots of revs, but the engine has enough low-rev muscle that you very rarely have to in order to maintain a good pace, so the noise level stays low enough for comfort most of the time. It fades away into the background at motorway speed, too.

The diesel engine does, however, make itself constantly obvious by transmitting vibrations to your hands and feet through the steering wheel and pedals, respectively. This isn’t problematic or uncomfortable, just noticeable.

Stick with the manual model, and your gearshifts are perhaps a tad imprecise, but not to the point where they hinder either your progress or your comfort. The automatic gearbox, meanwhile, switches between its various ratios quickly, smoothly and effectively, and it does make your life a little easier during long slogs.

You don’t actually hear much in the way of road noise in the Boxer, which is surprising in a vehicle with all the aerodynamic slipperiness of a housebrick. However, we suspect that rather than such noise being particularly well isolated, it’s simply drowned out by road noise, which is an almost constant companion. It’s audible at moderately low speeds, and by the time you’re up to the motorway limit, it’s pretty darned loud.

The Boxer has existed in this fourth-generation form since 2014, and over such a long period of time, it’s no surprise that the safety specifications have changed quite a bit due to frequent updates designed to keep the vehicle competitive with newer rivals. The thing to remember is that more safety tech was introduced as time went on, and more of it was made standard-fit as time went on further, so if you’re buying used, then the younger the example you buy, the more standard safety kit it’s likely to have.

In today’s market, the Boxer’s standard safety equipment includes three front airbags to help keep you and your colleagues from harm in the unpleasant event that the worst happens. However, your van also comes with a variety of driver aids to help prevent the worst from happening in the first place. These include automatic emergency braking, a lane support system, traffic sign recognition, intelligent speed limit assist and driver drowsiness detection.

The options list contains more safety measures, should you want them and be prepared to pay extra. Side and curtain airbags can be added for a few hundred quid, for example, while adding the City Plus Pack gives you blind spot assist, rear cross traffic alert, 360-degree parking sensors and a digital rear-view mirror. A reversing camera can also be added as part of various other option packs.

We’re not entirely sure why, but adaptive cruise control is not available on the Boxer, and that’s a little strange when it is available as an option on the Fiat Ducato, one of the other large vans from the Stellantis stable.

Like all the other related large-van offerings from the Stellantis Group, the Boxer has been awarded the Gold standard in Euro NCAP’s Commercial Vehicle safety ratings. This is the second-highest accolade you can get behind the Platinum standard. As impressive as that sounds initially, it becomes somewhat less impressive when you realise that of all the vans ever tested against these standards, only one has ever failed to achieve one of the top two classifications.

Early examples of the e-Boxer charged pretty quickly, but that was mainly down to their teeny battery packs that didn’t deliver that much in the way of driving range. The version with the 37kWh battery needed around six hours to take on a full charge from a regular 7.4kW AC home wallbox charger, according to Peugeot, while the 75kWh battery took around 12 hours. If you needed to charge more quickly, then Peugeot states that a sufficiently powerful public DC rapid charging station would take around an hour to deliver a 0-80% charge on both versions (which is a little confusing given the sizeable difference in battery capacity) due to a modest maximum DC charging speed of just 50kW.

As we’ve already said, the e-Boxer’s powertrain changed almost unrecognisably during the 2024 facelift, when it was given not only a much more powerful electric motor, but also a much bigger 110kWh battery. The extra capacity obviously brought a lot more range, but it also means that it’ll take a lot longer to charge as a result; Citroen quotes a figure of 16 hours and 40 minutes on that domestic wallbox charger we mentioned earlier.

If you’re using a DC public rapid charger, though, there’s hardly any difference in charging time between pre- and post-facelift e-Boxers. That’s because, as well as a much larger battery, post-facelift e-Boxers got a dramatically improved maximum DC charging rate of 150kW. Despite the extra battery capacity, that same 0-80% top-up can be delivered in just 55 minutes at a powerful enough charging station.

You won’t want to rely on such charging stations on a regular basis, though, because the power that comes out of them is vastly more expensive than domestic power. To give you some idea, a full charge at home will cost either £11 or £21 on the pre-facelift e-Boxer depending on which of the two battery options you’ve got, and around £31 on the post-facelift one (those figures assume that your domestic power is billed at the UK’s national average rate). On a DC public rapid charger, meanwhile, you’ll usually be multiplying those cost figures by three, sometimes more.

We have good news and bad news on this score. The bad news is that in the most recent installment of the HonestJohn.co.uk Satisfaction Index - our go-to source of reliability data that’s put together by our excellent sister website - Peugeot was named as the second-least reliable manufacturer in the entire study, and that’s out of no fewer than 29 carmakers considered.

The good news, however, is that the study only deals with passenger cars and not commercial vehicles, and so the Boxer itself won’t have contributed anything towards this fairly abysmal performance. It’s also true that such an abysmal performance won’t exactly fill you with confidence over your van’s potential reliability.

What fills you with a little more confidence, though, is the Boxer’s pretty generous warranty. You get manufacturer-supplied unlimited-mileage coverage for the first two years, while your third-year coverage is retailer-supplied and limited to 100,000 miles. Meanwhile, the e-Boxer’s battery pack is covered for up to eight years or 100,000 miles.

We’re not quite sure why there’s such a massive disparity, but the one version of the e-Boxer with a GVW of 3.5 tonnes sits in insurance group 40 (of 50, with group 50 vehicles being the most expensive to insure), while all the others sit in groups 43 and 44. The diesels, meanwhile, sit between groups 36 and 38, depending on the trim level.

Most Boxers have an official Gross Vehicle Weight (GVW) of 3,500kg, and if that applies to yours, then you’ll pay the flat rate of VED or vehicle tax levied on all Light Goods Vehicles (LGVs), and this currently stands at £335 per year.

If the GVW of your Boxer is more than 3,500kg - this applies to all the electric ones, plus a handful of the diesels including the window van and versions fitted with the 180PS diesel engine - then things become rather more complicated. That’s because these vehicles are taxed as Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGVs), which carries much more variation. The best thing to do is to look at the vehicle’s V5C document for the tax class applicable to the van and then check online or with the DVLA.

We’ve already said it several times so far, but it’s more pertinent here than anywhere else: the Boxer has been around for several years now, and it’s undergone frequent updates in order to keep it competitive with newer models. This means that standard equipment specs have changed on an almost constant basis, and trying to document all those changes would take all day. The thing to remember is that more and more kit was added incrementally as time went on, so if buying used, then buying the latest example you can afford will likely result in you getting the most kit for your money.

In years gone by, multiple trim levels have been offered, but today, there’s just one version of the Boxer, known as ‘Profesional’. There are, however, a few small differences in the level of standard kit between the panel van, window van, or chassis cab, plus a few slightly bigger differences depending on whether you choose the diesel or the EV.

With the diesel, your standard kit list includes manual air-conditioning, rear parking sensors, electrically adjustable and heated twin-lens door mirrors, electric front windows, fabric upholstery, and cruise control. Go for the EV, meanwhile, and you lose the cruise, but by way of compensation, your manual handbrake is upgraded to an electronic one, and your manual air-con is upgraded to automatic climate control.

There are more differences in infotainment specification between the diesel and electric versions, and we’ve documented these in the corresponding section of this review.