Peugeot Expert Van Review 2025: Price, specs & load capacity

If you need maximum loadspace for your business, then no, it probably isn’t. That’s because plenty of other rival medium-sized vans do better on that score. However, if maximum payload is more important to your business, then the Expert is among the best there is.

Diesel is most definitely the way to go if your business requires regular long motorway journeys. A diesel-powered Expert can handle long motorway schleps with ease, in a way that the electric-powered version never could due to its limited range and lengthy recharging times.

However, if your work is concentrated in the local area, and you have somewhere to charge up either at home or at the office, then going for the all-electric E-Expert could result in some significant savings in running costs. Just bear in mind that you’ll pay more - a lot more - to buy it in the first place.

Interesting question, this, because there’s a handful of vehicles that are very similar indeed to the Peugeot Expert: in fact, they’re almost identical save for a few minor pricing, spec and styling differences. That’s because Peugeot is part of the Stellantis Group of brands, and the mid-size commercial vehicle offerings from all of the van-producing brands from within the group  - the others being the Citroen Dispatch, Fiat Scudo, and Vauxhall Vivaro - are mechanically identical to each other. Even Toyota offers a version of the same van in the shape of the Proace, and that company isn’t even part of the Stellantis Group.

Of course, there are other mid-size vans that don’t share those same mechanicals, all of which should be considered as rivals. The Ford Transit Custom is probably the most recognisable of the lot, but the Volkswagen Transporter and Mercedes Vito are also very popular, while the Renault Trafic and Nissan Primastar will also have a say in where your money goes.

There’s no point having posh interior panels in a working vehicle like the Expert. They’d look nice for five minutes, before getting permanently scuffed up by a discarded tool or muddy boot, only to spend the rest of their existence looking shabby and sorry for themselves. That’s why durability is the order of the day in vehicles like these, so you’ll find hard-edged plastics pretty much everywhere that your fingertips care to forage in the Expert. Given the type of vehicle it is, that’s not only forgivable, but also entirely appropriate.

In early examples of the Expert, lower-spec versions didn’t get much more than a DAB radio: you had to step up the range to Professional trim at least to get a 7.0-inch touchscreen infotainment system with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and up further to Asphalt trim if you wanted built-in navigation.

In later versions, a 10.0-inch touchscreen was made standard throughout the range, as was a 10.0-inch digital instrument cluster behind the steering wheel, although again, if you wanted built-in navigation, then you had to upgrade from entry-level Professional trim to range-topping Asphalt trim.

The touchscreen system looks and feels rather basic by the standards of modern passenger cars, with dated graphics and limited functionality, but the system’s simplicity is also its strength because it makes finding and using the function you want quick and easy.

The Expert is available in two lengths: the shorter one - called Standard - is roughly 5.0 metres long, while the longer one - called Long, imaginatively - is around 5.3 metres in length. There was initially an even shorter version than the Standard offered at the beginning of the Expert’s life, but this has long since disappeared from price lists.

While some mid-size vans are also offered with a variety of roof heights, the Expert has only one, so the height of the load bay is fixed at 1,397mm in all versions. The width of the load bay between the wheel arches is also the same in both versions at 1,258mm.

The load length, when measured at the floor, is 2,512mm in the Standard, and 2,862mm in the Long. With those dimensions, the Standard is capable of carrying two Euro pallets, while the Long can squeeze in a third. There are sliding doors on both sides of the Expert as standard, giving openings that are big enough to load a Euro pallet through. You get twin side-hinged doors on the back of the van, which can open at up to 180 degrees, provided you unhook the stoppers on the hinges.

That’s not the full story where the length of the load area is concerned, though, because it can be boosted in higher-spec versions by a handy load-through hatch in the bulkhead that essentially extends the load bay into the passenger footwell. This allows you to carry long items - such as copper pipes or wooden planks, for example - of up to 3,674mm in the Standard, and up to 4,024mm in the Long. It also increases your overall load capacity from 5.3 cubic metres to 5.8 cubic metres in the Standard, and from 6.1 cubic metres to 6.6 cubic metres in the Long. It must be said, however, that none of those figures are particularly special by the standards of some mid-size vans. So, if maximum capacity is a priority for you, then you might want to look elsewhere.

The Expert is also offered in Crew Van form. This trades some loadspace - quite a bit of it, in fact - to fit in an extra row of three seats, taking the total count to six. As a result, load length is brought down to 2,017mm in the Standard, and down to 2,365mm in the Long, while the overall load capacities drop to 3.2 cubic metres and 4.0 cubic metres, respectively. What’s more, the load-through bulkhead feature isn’t available in the Double Cab, so you can’t boost the load length that way.

As we’ve discussed, the Expert isn’t among the class best for overall load volume, but it is for payload. For the electric versions of the Expert, those important figures stand between 915kg and 1,001kg, while the diesels do even better, with figures between 1,121kg and 1,384kg, depending on the version. Look to the 2.0-litre diesels for the biggest payload figures.

It’s a similar story with towing weights. The 2.0-litre diesels can pull a braked trailer of up to 2,500kg, a very creditable figure, while the 1.5s will haul 2,000kg. The electric Experts are rated to pull up to 1,000kg, which is not a bad figure for an EV.

Early on in its life, this generation of Peugeot Expert was available solely with diesel engines. Initially, these were 1.6-litre units with 95PS or 115PS, or 2.0-litre units with 120PS, 150PS or 180PS. A little later on, both 1.6s were replaced by a new 1.5 with 100PS, while the 2.0-litre units remained the same.

Fast-forward to today, and the choice of diesel engines has been slimmed right down to include just a 120PS 1.5 and a 145PS version of the 2.0-litre. Both can be had with a six-speed manual gearbox, but the latter can also be specified with an eight-speed automatic.

To be honest, the former is all you need. There’s enough gumption to get you up to speed with reasonable ease, and enough low-rev urge to keep you moving along the road without needing to make too many downshifts on the gearbox, although one or two of these might be needed on particularly steep inclines, especially if you have a heavily laden load area. The manual gearshift is perhaps a fraction notchy, but not to the degree that it gets in your way.

The same is true of the manual when paired with the 2.0-litre engine, but we haven’t had the chance to drive one fitted with the automatic yet. The bigger engine has a good bit more poke than the smaller one, and is capable of a surprisingly strong squirt of acceleration off the mark. However, the difference you’re likely to notice more day-to-day is that the stronger engine needs fewer downshifts to maintain your pace, making life a bit more relaxed, and that’s especially true when you’ve got a heavy load on board.

If the vast majority of your business is conducted locally rather than taking you to all four corners of the British Isles, then you might want to consider the E-Expert all-electric van. This has a 136PS electric motor, but you only get all of that if you select the Power driving mode. Select Normal mode, and 107PS is provided, and this ekes out the vehicle’s range a little further while still delivering adequate real-world performance. Eco mode, meanwhile, serves up 80PS to prioritise range even more.

Eco mode is absolutely fine when you’re pottering around town and for most low-speed urban driving, provided that you’re not in any particular hurry to get to where you’re going. Once the pace of the traffic around you rises to around the 50mph mark, though, you’ll need the extra pep of one of the other modes to keep up. Normal mode will be fine for the vast majority of driving situations: acceleration levels are undeniably leisurely, but adequate enough to make you feel like you’re not getting in the way of other road users. That said, Power mode is useful when you need a little extra zip for joining motorways or exploiting gaps in traffic.

Early examples of the all-electric Expert came with a choice of two battery sizes, 50kWh and 75kWh. These delivered combined range figures of 143 miles and 205 miles, respectively, according to official WLTP tests.

During the 2024 facelift, the 50kWh option was discontinued, leaving only the larger capacity 75kWh battery. However, the facelift also introduced improvements to the powertrain and battery chemistry, which the WLTP combined driving range to 219 miles. Bear in mind that this figure is based on the vehicle’s Normal driving mode, so you’ll probably get a few miles more in Eco, and a few miles less in Power.

The motor in the all-electric version of the Expert is near-silent, as such motors usually tend to be, so they’re obviously a lot quieter than Experts with a diesel engine. Those themselves aren’t unreasonably raucous, though, even when you find yourself having to work them hard, which doesn’t often happen. Hit the motorway, meanwhile, and the engine noise settles to a distant grumble, which is not in any way troublesome.

Road noise is definitely the prevailing noise you’ll hear when blatting along at 70mph, and you’ll detect some wind noise at that speed, too, but both are at perfectly acceptable levels compared with commercial vehicle competitors.

The shift action in manual models isn’t exactly the smoothest or sweetest you’ll ever encounter, but it’s not so notchy as to be a pain. We haven’t had the chance to try the torque converter automatic gearbox in the Expert, but we’ve tried it in other Stellantis Group vans (admittedly paired with different engines, mind), and it operates fairly smoothly and promptly. Like most EVs, electric versions of the Expert don’t have a gearbox because they don’t need one, meaning that your power is delivered in one constant, unbroken stream.

Early versions of the Expert had electronic stability control and driver and passenger front airbags, but that was about it. You didn’t even get automatic emergency braking unless you selected Asphalt or Sport trims, and this also earned you lane departure warning, speed limit recognition, driver attention alert, a head-up display and active cruise control.

In later versions of the Expert, those last two items were removed from Asphalt trim, although active cruise is still available as an optional extra. All the other features mentioned, including automatic emergency braking, were made standard across the range, along with high-beam assist, while Asphalt trim also got blind spot detection as standard.

Crew Van versions get side and curtain airbags in the front to add to the twin front ‘bags, but there’s no airbag coverage for those in the rear.

The passenger-carrying version of the Expert, known as the Rifter, was crash-tested by Euro NCAP way back in 2015 and achieved the full five-star rating. However, the tests back then were nowhere near as tough as they are today, so it’s unlikely that the result would be the same were it retested by today’s more stringent standards. In Euro NCAP’s commercial vehicle ratings, meanwhile, the Expert has earned the Gold standard, which is the second-highest rating available. However, this becomes rather less impressive-sounding when you realise that the body has only ever tested one van that didn’t achieve one of the top two ratings.

The all-electric version of the Expert was initially offered with two different battery options, a 50kWh option and a 75kWh one. A while later, Peugeot stopped offering the 50kWh option, leaving only the 75kWh battery.

You can charge the Expert from a regular three-pin domestic socket, but the cable for doing so isn’t provided, and anyway, it takes ages. You’ll be waiting around 30 hours for a full charge on the 50kWh version, and almost 40 hours on the 75kWh version.

Home charges will be much quicker if you have a 7.4kW wallbox charger installed, like most EV drivers will. On one of those, the same level of charge is delivered in a little over seven hours for the 50kWh battery, and a little over 11 hours for the 75kWh version.

Whatever your chosen home charging solution, a full juice-up is likely to cost (assuming your household power is billed at the UK’s national average rate) around £14 for the 50kWh version, and around £21 for the 75kWh.

Bear in mind that the power that comes out of public DC rapid chargers costs way more than domestic power, often three times the price, or maybe even more. Both versions of the electric Expert support 100kW DC charging: the 50kWh one can take on a 0-80% charge in around 30 minutes, while the 75kWh one takes 45 minutes.

Consult our usual source of reliability data - the HonestJohn.co.uk Satisfaction Index - and you might be slightly alarmed to find that the most recent instalment named Peugeot as the second-least reliable manufacturer in the entire study, out of 29 carmakers considered.

It is true, however, that the study only deals with passenger cars and not commercial vehicles, so the Expert itself won’t have contributed to such a poor showing. It’s still not a result that fills you with confidence, mind.

You get a half-decent warranty on the Expert, though. There’s an unlimited-mileage manufacturer cover for the first two years, while in the third year, you get a retailer-supplied warranty limited to 100,000 miles. The battery in electric versions is covered for up to eight years or 100,000 miles, meanwhile.

Get yourself an all-electric e-Expert, and you’ll pay a group 33 or 34 insurance premium, depending on the precise spec of your vehicle. Specify a Scudo with the 1.5-litre diesel engine, and those groupings will be either 32 or 33, while the 2.0-litre diesel commands groups of between 34 and 36. What does all that mean? Well, all vehicles fall into an insurance grouping of between 1 and 50, with group 1 vehicles being the cheapest to insure and group 50 vehicles being the most expensive. This gives you some idea of where the Expert sits on that scale.

All LCVs (Light Commercial Vehicles) with a combustion engine are liable for the same flat rate of VED road tax. This is currently charged at £335 per year. You’ll pay £15 more over the year if you decide to pay in instalments via direct debit, or an extra £35 if you choose to pay every six months rather than annually. These aren’t life-changing amounts, but it’s cash worth saving if you can afford the single lump sum.

As of April 2025, the VED exemption for EVs will be lifted, so E-Partner drivers be liable for the same tax costs as drivers of diesel versions.

Early on in its life, the Expert was available in a wide variety of trim levels. S trim was the entry point, and this came with electric front windows, electrically adjusting door mirrors, cruise control, and a DAB radio. Then came the Grip version, which added the handy Moduwork feature along with Grip Control, which is a cleverer version of electronic traction control that makes the van more capable in slippery conditions, like the mud you might find on a building site. This trim was later axed, but the Grip Control could still be added to other trims as an optional extra.

Then came Professional trim, which added air-conditioning, rear parking sensors, an alarm, automatic lights and wipers, and a 7.0-inch touchscreen infotainment system with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

Asphalt trim was up next, giving you built-in navigation, a head-up display, automatic emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, a leather steering wheel, front- and rear parking sensors, a 180-degree reversing camera, and power-folding door mirrors, along with smarter looks thanks to alloy wheels, body-coloured bumpers and metallic paint. On top of that, range-sopping Sport trim added Sports decals and dual-zone climate control.

Later on, the trim structure was pared back to include just Professional and Asphalt trims. The Professional provides remote locking, electric windows, heated and electrically adjusting door mirrors, automatic lights and wipers, cruise control, a 10.0-inch central touchscreen and digital instrument screen, rear parking sensors, and air-conditioning.

The higher-end Asphalt trim gets body-coloured bumpers, LED headlights, front fog lights, the Moduwork load-through feature, an alarm, front- and rear parking sensors, a reversing camera and a digital rear-view mirror.