Citroen e-SpaceTourer Review 2025: Price, specs & boot space

If you have a large family and need ultimate practicality in getting them around, or more likely, you run a private hire or taxi company and you need a vehicle that can maximise the carrying capacity of every journey, then the Citroen e-SpaceTourer is a really good option. Either way, do bear in mind that the Toyota Proace Verso - which is a mechanically identical alternative - comes with a far superior warranty.

Because Citroen stopped selling the SpaceTourer with diesel engines back in 2021, you can now only have the vehicle in all-electric e-SpaceTourer form. There are two battery options to choose from, but the range of the smaller 49kWh one is very limited, so we’d advise going for the bigger 75kWh one. In terms of trim level, it depends what you want. The entry-level trim - currently called You! - has enough kit but a rather no-frills feel due to cloth upholstery and a plastic floor lining, while the range-topper - currently called Max - feels much posher with leather seats and carpets. It’s a lot pricier, though.

There are a handful of cars that are extremely similar to the Citroen e-SpaceTourer: they’re almost identical, in fact. The Peugeot e-Traveller and the Vauxhall Vivaro Life Electric are, mechanically, the same car underneath, and the only things that separate them are a few differences in styling, specification and pricing. The Toyota Proace Verso EV is also the same, and Toyota isn’t even a part of the Stellantis group of brands.

There are plenty of other non-related large van-based MPVs to choose from, too. There’s the Ford Tourneo Custom and the Volkswagen Multivan, or if you want something posher, there’s always the Mercedes V-Class.

The feeling you get from the interior of your e-SpaceTourer will vary grealy on which version you pick. For example, choose the latest entry-level You! Trom, and you get cloth seats and a plastic floor covering, giving quite a no-frills environment. Choose the Max version, meanwhile, and all the seats have leather upholstery, while the floors are carpeted, and this makes it feel like a different environment entirely, with a much classier feel.

Either way, you’ll find that the plastics used to construct the structural part of the interior is hard to the touch, and so they’re not as appealing to the fingertips as the squishy cushions surfaces found in many passenger cars that aren’t derived from vans, but importantly, they look smart enough so as not to feel low-rent, and they feel sturdily assembled.

In early examples of the e-SpaceTourer, you get a seven-inch central touchscreen infotainment system that supports functionality including Bluetooth, DAB, voice control, and Mirror Screen connectivity, which brings together Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Higher-end trims also came with more speakers and built-in sat-nav. The system wasn’t the poshest-looking or the most responsive, and there were quirks with its user interface, but its relative simplicity meant that it was fairly easy to find your way around the system.

The 2024 facelift brought an upgrade in infotainment tech. Both versions now come with a 10-inch touchscreen in the centre of the dashboard. The level of functionality remained broadly the same, except the Mirror Screen was made wireless, you got a 10-inch digital driver’s display behind the steering wheel instead of analogue dials, and you also got more USBs as standard.

Upgrade from the You! to the Max version, and in addition, you also get native navigation, a wireless smartphone charger, an upgraded speaker system, and two extra USBs in the second row.

A few of the creases in the user interface were also ironed out with the upgrade, so it’s generally a fairly simple system to use. Tech-heads might yearn for more complexity, but we prefer these things to stay simple.

One of the benefits of converting a van into a people carrier is the fact that its boxy shape maximises the amount of interior space provided. This area is where the e-SpaceTourer very much overperforms, then.

The vehicle is available in two different body lengths. The M is 4.98 metres front-to-back, while the XL version is a little longer at 5.33 metres, with all of that extra length going into the rear overhang.

The precise amount of space, practicality and seats you get depends on the version you go for, and how you spec your van. The maximum seat count you get is nine, which comes as standard on the entry-level You! Version sold today. These seats come in three rows of three.

Specify the Max version, and the three front seats (there’s an individual driver’s seat next to a two-person bench) are swapped for conventional seats for the driver and a single front passenger, taking the seat count down to eight. As an optional extra on the Max, you can also swap the middle-row bench for two separate armchair-style seats, dropping the seat count to seven, and you can also do the same with the third-row bench, resulting in a total of six more luxurious seats. 

Whatever seating layout you go for, the seats you get slide backwards and forwards on runners and can be removed completely to maximise cargo space (more on that in a moment), essentially turning the e-SpaceTourer back into a van. However, the heavy seats take plenty of muscle to remove, even more muscle to reinstall, and you have to find somewhere to store them. If you simply want to fold your seats rather than remove them completely, then with both the bench seats and the individual seats, the backrests simply collapse on top of the bases, but there’s nothing more clever going on than that. At least the bases lie relatively flat.

Whatever seat you end up in, headroom is phenomenally generous, and in the long-wheelbase version, the legroom varies from adequate to exceptional depending on where your seat sits on its runners. Even with the minimum, there’s enough for a six-foot adult to be comfortable. The short-wheelbase version doesn’t have quite as much legroom to play with, so you’ll have to be a little more careful where the seats sit on their runners, but there will easily be enough legroom for everyone with a little bit of give-and-take between those in rows two- and three.

Boot space is a little difficult to quantify in the usual method of litres because there are so many variables: body length, where your sliding seats are set, how many seats are in place, etc. Just suffice it to say that even with all these variables set to provide minimum boot space, there’s still absolutely loads of the stuff in both body styles. Even if you go on a family holiday nine-up, you won’t have to pack light.

The access you get to all that space is sensational, too. The sliding rear side doors (powered on top-end versions) make getting into the rear seats an absolute doddle, especially in tight car parks, while the massive boot opening is comparable to a van’s. The caveat is that the top-hinged tailgate is super long, so you’ll need plenty of space behind your car in order to get it open, which isn’t always possible in busy car parks. However, some versions come with a rear window that opens independently of the rest of the tailgate so that you can drop items into the boot without having to open the whole thing.

The basic powertrain in the e-SpaceTourer is the same one found in countless electric vehicle offerings from within the Stellantis Group, including the Vauxhall Corsa Electric and the Peugeot e-208. In those cars, the powertrain has the ability to feel quite perky at times, but it won’t have escaped your attention that the e-SpaceTourer is a much bigger, much heavier car than either of those, so performance is inevitably impacted.

At the core of the powertrain is a front-mounted electric motor capable of serving up a maximum of 136PS. We say ‘capable’ because it doesn’t always. For the full power output, you have to select the Power driving mode. If you don’t, the car defaults to Normal mode, which serves up slightly less power in order to preserve a little bit of battery range. Go the other way and select Eco mode, and even less power is delivered to preserve even more range.

Even in Power mode, though, this is not a quick car, as evidenced by a 0-62mph time of 13.1 seconds and a top speed of 81mph. In terms of sensation, your off-the-mark pickup feels adequately brisk, but nothing more than that, while your on-the-move acceleration feels more reserved but still adequate.

In truth, there’s very little difference in the sensation of speed you feel when you switch back down to Normal mode, so you might as well stick with the middle-ground mode and reap the benefits of a few miles of extra range. Eco mode, meanwhile, is fine for town use, but anything faster than that will require the extra urge of the pokier modes.

Depending on the age and spec of your e-SpaceTourer, that motor is fed by a battery of either 49kWh or 75kWh. We’ll talk about the range these give immediately below.

To begin with, only one size of lithium-ion battery was available in the e-SpaceTourer, and this 49kWh battery pack gave the car an official WLTP range of up to 136 miles. That battery option is still offered today, but it’s been joined in the, er, range by a larger 75kWh option, which boosts the WLTP range up to 215 miles. 

Neither figure is brilliant compared with those of the best electric passenger cars if we’re honest, and you should also bear in mind that these figures are very much a best-case scenario. Achieving these laboratory-gleaned figures in the real world will be exceptionally difficult, and you should bank on getting at least 20% less in normal driving conditions. Drive at high motorway speeds in cold weather, and you’ll see your returns absolutely plummet.

By their very nature, electric motors are far quieter than combustion engines. There's a faint whirr to be heard as you pull away and occasionally when you accelerate, but otherwise, you’ll hear virtually nothing from your powertrain.

The e-SpaceTourer we drove wasn’t half bad on wind and road noise, too, with both kept to very reasonable levels, even at high motorway speeds. There is a caveat, though, and that’s that the car we drove was in Max trim, which we know gets additional soundproofing compared to the entry-level car, so we can guarantee that the other version will be as peaceful on the road.

In its entry-level trim (Feel, Business Edition or You!, depending on the age of the car), the e-SpaceTourer comes with front and side airbags in the front seats, but no airbag coverage in the rear seats, which isn’t ideal in a car designed to carry vast amounts of people. In all higher-end trim levels, meanwhile, the e-SpaceTourer also comes with curtain airbags for the front and rear seats, plus a blind spot monitor. Whatever the vintage of your e-SpaceTourer, you get three Isofix child seat mounting points.

In earlier examples of the e-SpaceTourer, automatic emergency braking was on the options list rather than being standard-fit, and the same went for other useful driver aids such as lane keep assist, speed limit recognition and recommendation. That was rectified when You! Trim came along as the entry-level offering, as all of this stuff was made standard. The higher-end Max added a blind spot monitor as well. However, adaptive cruise control with stop-and-go traffic function still languishes on the options list and is only available on the more expensive Max version.

The Citroen SpaceTourer has received the full five stars in Euro NCAP crash tests, but that was way back in 2015 when it was tested as a diesel car. Testing standards have moved on a lot since then, so you should really pay much (well, any) attention to that rating.

As an individual model, the Citroen e-SpaceTourer doesn’t sell in large enough numbers to make any great impact in the various reliability and customer satisfaction surveys doing the rounds. However, the latest HonestJohn.co.uk Satisfaction Index, our go-to source for such information, has placed Citroen as the fifth worst manufacturer for reliability, based on owner feedback. That might not fill you with confidence.

Neither might the warranty. You get unlimited-mileage manufacturer cover for the first two years, then a third year of retailer-supplied cover with a limit of 60,000 miles. That’s the bare minimum that a buyer of any new car should expect.

Depending on which of the various versions of the e-SpaceTourer you choose, insurance groups will range from group 30 at the lower end of the scale up to group 39 at the upper end. As insurance groupings run from 1 to 50, with premiums being more expensive the higher the number, that gives you an idea of where the e-SpaceTourer sits on the scale of insurance costs.

Now that the SpaceTourer is only available as the all-electric e-SpaceTourer, you don’t pay anything in VED or vehicle tax at all. However, that will change in April 2025, when the VED exemption for EVs is revoked, and you’ll likely pay the same as drivers of regular petrol and diesel cars. That currently stands at £190 per year, but we’d be staggered if that rate wasn’t put up come April as well.

The trim levels available on the Citroen e-SpaceTourer have chopped and changed quite a bit during its time on sale. Initially, you chose between Feel and Flair versions. Even entry-level Feel cars looked smart with 17-inch alloy wheels, front fog lights, and body-coloured bumpers and door handles, while standard luxury kit included automatic lights and wipers, air conditioning, heated door mirrors with power adjustment and folding, remote central locking, rear parking sensors, and cruise control. That’s on top of all the infotainment and safety gear we mentioned earlier.

Flair trim still felt like an altogether more upmarket experience, though, due to full leather upholstery and a leather steering wheel. The upgrade also included other luxury kit, including a panoramic glass roof, split-opening tailgate, a head-up display, an electric parking brake, keyless entry and go, powered sliding rear doors with foot operation, a 180-degree colour reversing camera, and powered front seats with heating and massage function.

Alongside these (and eventually instead of as time went on) were offered Business Edition, Business, and Business Lounge trims. These were tailored more towards the professional private hire market. Most of the same kit was offered, with a few small variations and with a middle-ground stage in the middle.

Later on still, the trim-level count was slashed back down to two, You! And Max, and those are the ones offered by Citroen today. In some areas, equipment levels have been enhanced, but in others, they’ve actually been throttled back a little bit. For instance, the entry-level You! version looks a little basic with 16-inch steel wheels and black bumpers and door mirror casings, but you do get a decent amount of standard luxury kit. This includes automatic lights and wipers, air conditioning, powered and heated door mirrors, remote central locking, an electric parking brake, rear parking assist, and cruise control. That’s on top of all the infotainment and safety gear we mentioned earlier.

The other trim is called Max, and again, this version feels like a much higher-end car altogether. For starters, it looks a lot smarter with 17-inch alloys, front fog lights, LED daytime running lights and body-coloured bumpers. The interior is transformed by full leather upholstery and a leather steering wheel, and you also get luxuries including climate control with rear controls, power folding door mirrors, keyless entry and go, powered sliding rear doors with foot operation, 180-degree colour reversing camera, all-round parking sensors, and window blinds in the second row.