It’s no secret that DS – the luxury offshoot of Citroen – isn’t exactly a sales phenomenon, despite making some quite nice cars. We wonder if part of that might be down to how darn difficult it is to Google. Search the brand alone and it’s mixed in with results for that handheld Nintendo you had as a kid, while try Googling the name of the DS 9 without a space and you’ll be directed toward Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
It’s perhaps with this in mind that DS is revising its naming strategy. Its future models will be badged in a largely similar way to those that have come before, but with ‘No’ – as in ‘number’ – wedged between the make and the number denoting a car’s position within the range.
We’ll first see this strategy implemented on the No8, the car we previously thought would simply be called the DS 8, which we had a first look at a few weeks ago. As you can see it’s a jacked-up fastback. You could sort of call it a saloon, but it’s more SUV in dimensions – expect similar to that of the Peugeot e-3008 which it’ll share a lot with – and DS happily calls it one. We’re not really going to spend energy arguing that one.
Beyond that, the camouflage has done a pretty decent job of hiding any further details. We can see thin LEDs and tusk-like lights below this, and repeat that sentence for the rear of the car.
DS No8 prototype – side/front
Oh, and that ‘750km’ on the side indicates the target range, or 466 miles to those of us dealing in Imperial units. Expect the real-world range to be a little above 400 miles, then. Its 0.24 coefficient should help with that.
Alongside the new name, DS has also showed off the car’s interior which, typically for the brand, features some fairly avantgarde styling and what look like some rather nice materials, plus the inevitable touchscreen and sparseness of proper buttons.
DS No8 – interior
Beyond that, anything else we can tell you about the car will be speculation. We’re assuming this to be front-driven with the possibility of a dual-motor variant down the line, though that would then eat into its range. We’d anticipate it to only be offered with Stellantis’ choice 96.9kWh usable battery pack as seen in the long-range Peugeot e-3008.
We’ll see the uncamouflaged car before the end of the year, complete with more details.
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