Land Rover Range Rover Electric review

Eight years after the Jaguar I-Pace, we drive JLR's second all-electric model: a Range Rover like none of its line

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Right now, 2.8-tonnes of high-end automotive real estate is gently picking and clambering its way up a dusty, rocky forest track. It’s doing so in a part of rural Herefordshire where its various predecessors have been brought to earn their stripes for decades, as one of the most celebrated lineages in British car-making has advanced: that of the Range Rover. 

We are at JLR’s Eastnor Castle offroad development and demonstration centre, and we’ve come for our very first taste of arguably the very boldest full-sized ‘Rangey’ there has ever been.

The Range Rover Electric is JLR’s first EV since the Jaguar I-Pace of 2018. It will be introduced to the global market later in 2025, at a time of uncertainty for the wider adoption of electric cars. And yet there’s an equanimity about this car’s execution, and an authenticity about its identity, that suggests it’ll do alright whichever way the wind of public opinion happens to blow.

That’s because, rather than a novelty item, this car derives its strength from being just another Range Rover. It won’t replace or supplant any other Range Rover derivative; and nobody will be obliged, cajoled or persuaded to buy one. It’s an extension of the Range Rover model line, to be sold alongside the various petrol, diesel and PHEV derivatives that already exist; and designed to be every inch as capable, luxurious, enveloping and special as any of them.

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DESIGN & STYLING

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Under the skin, the Range Rover Electric uses the same MLA Flex aluminium-intensive model platform as the regular ‘L460’ Range Rover and ‘L461’ Range Rover Sport. “When we designed it for the current Range Rover [which appeared in 2021], we had both plug-in hybrid and BEV applications in mind,” explains Simon Fairbrother, Chief Programme Engineer. 

The car uses a nickel-manganese-cobalt drive battery back with 118kWh of usable capacity, and twin permanent magnet synchronous electric motors (one per axle) of a combined 542bhp and 627lb ft, all made at JLR’s Electric Propulsion Manufacturing Centre in Wolverhampton. 

The 3.5-tonne towing capacity of the standard car will drop to 2.5- in the EV; and JLR has developed special software to effectively estimate electric range when towing - which will take a hefty turn.
Matt Saunders
Road test editor

More motors and more power, Fairbrother points out, would have required a bigger battery; which itself would have added weight, cost efficiency and hurt range - and probably caused the engineers to extend battery capacity again to compensate, in a decidedly unvirtuous circle. This, he insists, is the right configuration and performance level for the Range Rover Electric, with the associated technology as it exists today; and it should make for around 300 miles of real-world range, and on-road performance comparable to that of a top-level petrol V8.

Rather than sticking with the Range Rover’s regular suspension, the EV adopts the twin-chamber air suspension of the Range Rover Sport, whose adaptive damping technology allows closer control of its body movements. Since it has a lower centre of gravity than any other Range Rover, it also does without the 'ARC' active anti-roll bars of the standard Range Rover, and JLR claims it has superior ride quality as a result.

JLR doesn’t have a final homologated kerbweight figure yet, but is targeting around 2800kg; which, while it’s clearly a whole lot, would actually make this fully electric Range Rover only around 100kg heavier than an equivalent petrol-electric PHEV, with a more favourable weight distribution.

INTERIOR

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JLR is planning both standard- and long-wheelbase versions of the Range Rover Electric; although even the former has a wheelbase equal to that of the previous-generation Range Rover in long-wheelbase form. 

There won’t be a seven-seat cabin layout, with part of the electric drive system taking up the under-floor space in the boot that would have been needed. But above-floor boot space in the car is unaffected by the packaging of all that; and Range Rover will even sell you a car with a spare wheel, should you want one - as long as you don’t mind that it is carried above that boot floor.

Space in both front and rear is expansive; although only the long-wheelbase version will really deliver the sybaritic second-row space necessary to take this car into Bentley or Rolls-Royce territory for sheer lounging space.

You sit high and quite upright at the steering wheel, with that famed ‘command’ vantage point. And the layout of physical controls and digital displays in front of you, meanwhile, is identical to those of the regular Range Rover.

A lifecycle update for the car in 2023 took away the physical heating and ventilation controls, and its physical drive mode selector; all of which you may miss if you don’t like having to dive into the central touchscreen to access every minor function and adjustment.

And, if anything, the Range Rover Electric deserves bigger heating and ventilation controls than other derivatives, since it features a patented thermal management system called ThermAssist. Developed in-house by JLR, this was considered central to the vehicle’s ability to keep its occupants cool in the heat of the desert, warm in sub-zero environments, and happy just about everywhere in between; as well as keeping its drive battery operating efficiently. 

It’s cracked up to be some 40 per cent more efficient than the equivalent system on the Jaguar I-Pace, and is allegedly capable of scavenging heat from the battery with which to warm the cabin in temperatures as low as -15 degrees.

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

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The Range Rover Electric’s 542bhp of peak power isn’t likely to cause too many heightened expectations in this department. We have so far only driven the car below 20mph, on a mix of single-track sealed roads and forest tracks; so impressions about on-road performance and drivability will come later.

And as far as offroading goes; Eastnor’s tracks were mostly dry on the day of our test, so didn’t present the challenge to this car’s outright traction and torque-vectoring capacities that they might have on a soggy December afternoon. But a cakewalk, they certainly ain’t. In places they climb and descend slippery gradients of more than 25 degrees, as well as twisting and turning around gulleys, and over rocks and ridges. 

And yet the unflappable calmness with which the Range Rover Electric can simply ease itself up, down, over and around everything before it inspires incredible confidence in its capabilities. 

Nothing seems to phase it. Nothing requires the merest run up, or suck-it-and-see hurried stab of power. It sniffs out traction bit by bit, like a mountain goatherd who’s rehearsed every step; and without any need to worry about keeping engine revs from bogging down, momentum from dying, or wheels from spinning away fruitlessly.

Without an asymmetrical motor layout, the car vectors torque in offroad situations via open diffs and brake interventions, using specially developed Terrain Response traction control software adapted for the torque of electric motors. “We can control a slipping wheel about a hundred times faster than in the standard car,” says Fairbrother.

The difference that makes to the Range Rover’s offroad capability is remarkable; and, in tandem with an apparent dearth of effort expended in what it’s doing caused by the lack of any revving engine, it makes for an air of assurance that suits a Range Rover quite brilliantly. 

As well as being superbly quiet and calm when running on asphalt, there’s a serene composure about this car even at the toughest of moments. So accessible is the car’s torque, and so fine and effective its electronic governance, that you seldom need more than 40- or 50 per cent throttle to ease gently over the biggest roots, or out of deep ruts. The loudest noises you’ll hear will likely be water sloshing past the wheels, gravel crunching under the tyres, and the background hum of the air conditioning.

RIDE & HANDLING

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Like other Range Rovers, the electric version comes with four-wheel steering as standard, making what is a very long and bulky car that bit easier to swing around in tight spaces, whether those spaces happen to be between trees on a country estate or between cars in the supermarket car park.

At low speeds, the car didn’t struggle to keep its composure, isolating the cabin very effectively on the road; and maintaining plenty of level ground clearance off it so that it only momentarily grounded over the toughest of obstacles.

The car is a little more prone to this than the standard Range Rover because the packaging of its drive batttery has cost it a little outright ground clearance (260- vs 290mm), and reduced its breakover angle (23 degrees vs 27-) compared with the ICE-powered model.

But the Range Rover’s other minimum-standard capability stats are untouched (it’s got a 900mm wading depth; a 45 degree ‘drivethough’ climbing capacity; and can be brought to a stop and will restart on a 35-degree incline). And the battery itself is well-protected, its pack casing designed with enough strength and packaging margin so that it can withstand grounding hits, and take the odd whack from a passing rock.

Wider on-road, higher speed driving impressions will come later.

MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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Final prices for the Range Rover Electric have yet to be announced, but JLR is reportedly targeting a position for it roughly equivalent to a V8 Autobiography; which means it might just squeeze in under £150,000. 

This will clearly be a model for the especially well-heeled, even amongst Range Rover regulars. But the firm already claims to have more than 60,000 firm expressions of interest in the car; which, if converted, could represent more than a year’s production volume.

The 300-mile real-world range promised for the car would seem to be realistic, depending a little on particular pattern of usage. Our Eastnor test car was indicating some 160-miles of range remaining on a half-charged battery, after some moderately intensive if slow offroading. 

JLR’s engineers do themselves admit that, in longer-range motorway use where the car’s aerodynamic profile is more of an obstacle for it, 300 miles would be an optimistic expectation. But they offer its 800-volt architecture in reply, and DC rapid charging speeds comparable with the most advanced EVs on the market.

VERDICT

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It’s probably something of a slight on Range Rover customers to expect the more traditionally minded among them to have been scanning this review for signs of all the things that this bold new electric version can’t do; for proof that it’s ‘not a real Range Rover’. 

That search would certainly leave them disappointed, if they were so minded; but the car, if given a chance, would be vastly less likely to.

Though this was only a very brief first taster of it, there is clearly a case to be made that this is simply ‘more Range Rover’; more refined, more effortless, with a more convincing air of luxury, and even more assurance in its composure offroad when the pressure’s really on. And that can’t be a bad way to take a rather large technological step.

There are some compromises it offers up; but they’re ones that’ll be familiar to those already used to large luxury EVs, while to plenty of Range Rover regulars making the switch to electric motoring, they’ll likely seem inconsequential or well worth the trade.

Others can, of course, keep on buying whichever combustion-engined model suits them better, and needn’t feel that their preference are threatened by this newcomer at all.

Matt Saunders

Matt Saunders Autocar
Title: Road test editor

As Autocar’s chief car tester and reviewer, it’s Matt’s job to ensure the quality, objectivity, relevance and rigour of the entirety of Autocar’s reviews output, as well contributing a great many detailed road tests, group tests and drive reviews himself.

Matt has been an Autocar staffer since the autumn of 2003, and has been lucky enough to work alongside some of the magazine’s best-known writers and contributors over that time. He served as staff writer, features editor, assistant editor and digital editor, before joining the road test desk in 2011.

Since then he’s driven, measured, lap-timed, figured, and reported on cars as varied as the Bugatti Veyron, Rolls-Royce Phantom, Tesla Roadster, Ariel Hipercar, Tata Nano, McLaren Senna, Renault Twizy and Toyota Mirai. Among his wider personal highlights of the job have been covering Sebastien Loeb’s record-breaking run at Pikes Peak in 2013; doing 190mph on derestricted German autobahn in a Brabus Rocket; and driving McLaren’s legendary ‘XP5’ F1 prototype. His own car is a trusty Mazda CX-5.