Quiet, refined, and capable, electric vehicles make for perfect luxury cars. Some high-end automakers like Cadillac and Rolls-Royce pounced on this opportunity early, whereas others like Jaguar Land Rover have taken their sweet time.
Five years after the British luxury marque first announced the Range Rover Electric, and over a year after we reviewed the prototype in Sweden, the SUV is finally ready for a full reveal. In July, I flew out to England to learn all about its powertrain, battery, and software details. After checking out the production SUV in person and driving one on an off-road course, I was blown away. This one was worth the wait.
[Full Disclosure: JLR invited me to England to check out the Range Rover Electric and drive it off-road. It covered all travel, hotel, and food expenses.]
Range Rover Electric Range And Charging
First, let’s talk specs. Land Rover is targeting up to 333 miles of EPA-estimated range in the U.S. (or 600 km WLTP) from a twin-stacked battery with 118.5 kilowatt-hours of usable capacity. While that’s not exactly mind blowing, it should be ample for most owners. With over 400 miles of range, other premium electric SUVs like the Porsche Cayenne Electric and the Lucid Gravity outclass the Range Rover Electric in sheer road-tripping abilities.
Martin Limpert, the managing director for Range Rover, told InsideEVs in an interview that getting the range and performance right was a balancing act.
“The moment you enhance one of your parameters, you sacrifice another one,” Limpert said. “We could have gone for more energy, but that would mean a heavier battery and less performance capability.”
The Range Rover Electric comes five years after the British brand first announced its plan to make an EV.
Photo by: Land Rover
The charging performance is solid too. Thanks to a 350-kilowatt peak charging rate, a 10-80% charge will take a breezy 22 minutes, the company says. At compatible stations, the Range Rover Electric will be able to add 125 miles of driving range in just 10 minutes of plug-in time. At a 22 kW Level 2 home charger, a full 0-100% charge will take about 7 hours.
Limpert said a single full charge would be enough for 97% of customer journeys. In other words, Range Rover owners don’t actually drive all that much, according to the brand’s internal research.
Wealthy Range Rover buyers will all likely have their own garages, so installing a Level 2 charger and plugging in at home should be their ideal way to juice up. The U.S.-spec cars will get a native NACS port with Plug & Charge compatibility at select networks.
Range Rover Electric Powertrain And Performance
The brand claims some 80,000 prospective buyers have shown interest in the EV, of which 20% already own an EV and 70% are new to the brand. The vast majority of them are U.S. based. The memo the automaker apparently got from them was basically to keep the Range Rover the same but just power it with electrons.
The Range Rover EV has decent range: 333 miles of targeted EPA range.
Photo by: Land Rover
So the automaker kept its design and proportions identical to the gas-powered and plug-in hybrid models, to the extent that they all look exactly the same. The cabin feels as opulent as the gas powered Range Rover, too. You could spend hours in its plush second-row seats, which wear pillow-like headrests. It also gets the world’s first electrostatic speakers in a production car as a $12,570 option. That sounds ludicrously expensive—and it very much is—but it was also by far the best sound system I’ve experienced in any car.
Visually, the only noticeable differences between the EV and the gas versions are the charge port and lack of exhaust pipes on the EV.
As a result, the Range Rover Electric rides on the existing Modular Longitudinal Architecture-Flex (MLA-Flex) which also underpins the PHEV, gas, and diesel Rovers. However, the electric drivetrain and the battery pack helped it improve the body’s torsional rigidity by 50%. The automaker claims to have filed some 300 patents for the in-house developed drive units, battery pack, and thermal management system.
The Range Rover Electric rides on a platform that also underpins PHEV, gas, and diesel versions.
Photo by: Land Rover
Limpert said the decision to bring all battery and propulsion development and production in-house contributed to the five-year gap between the Range Rover Electric’s initial announcement and full launch. “[It] took us longer than we expected because when you do something in-house completely, you identify roadblocks,” he said. “And it was more important for us to get it right than get it fast.”
I saw an exposed MLA Flex chassis, the battery pack, and the motors at JLR’s Electric Propulsion Manufacturing Center in Wolverhampton, where engineers said the in-house development brought many packaging and weight-saving advantages.
The 344 nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) prismatic battery cells come from Japan’s AESC, which is now owned by China’s Envision Group. They’re stacked in a cell-to-pack configuration, with a total pack weight of about 1,622 pounds (736 kg) without the coolant and a coffin shaped electronics module on top of the pack. Several automakers are now adopting the cell-to-pack design to remove the battery’s structural complexity and to squeeze more energy into a limited space.
The SUV has a large central touchscreen.
Photo by: Land Rover
As a result, JLR said the EV is only 165 pounds (75 kg) heavier than the plug-in hybrid, which is pretty remarkable. (It is nearly 1,000 pounds heavier than the six-cylinder with a standard wheelbase, however, which is expected.)
Limpert also said every single battery gets a digital twin so the company can monitor its health from afar, and claimed the customer profiles remain anonymous.
“Battery health is assured,” he claimed. “We are able to track and trace the performance of each and every battery globally and predict any kind of [faults] and accordingly update through over the air software,” he added. If the issue needs mechanical fix, the automaker’s prediction engine can alert the owner to get the pack serviced.
On the drive unit side, the EV will be powered by permanent magnet motors at both ends with standard all-wheel drive. The combined output is 542 horsepower and 627 pound feet of torque, enough to jolt the Range Rover Electric from a standstill to 60 miles per hour in 4.3 seconds.
Off-Roading In The Range Rover Electric
I drove the Range Rover Electric on JLR’s off-road course, and it was impressive. The throttle calibration in the off-road modes is particularly forgiving, so even if you’re inconsistent with your right foot, the vehicle never jerks or responds abruptly. There’s enough travel in the accelerator pedal to smooth out little inconsistencies, allowing the Range Rover to maintain a remarkably steady pace over challenging terrain.
Photo by: JLR
It made a 30-degree rock crawl feel almost effortless. I’ll give you a sense of how steep that is in real terms; as the car ahead of me climbed, I could actually see its nose.
When it was my turn, I tackled the same section using one-pedal driving, with an instructor guiding me along the way. I climbed the incline, stopped midway to pivot around a large rock, and then simply got back on the accelerator to continue climbing without ever touching the brake. The company said one-pedal driving works at up to 33 degree ascents and the EV can climb up to 45 degree slopes.
What also helps is that the SUV can adjust motor speeds every 50 milliseconds and manage wheel slip up to 100 times faster than an equivalent combustion powered vehicle. Those are impressive numbers, particularly when you consider how much control they give the vehicle over individual wheels on loose or uneven surfaces. One engineer said the Rivian R1S was among the vehicles JLR benchmarked while developing the EV.
I came away impressed by how easy it was to control the Range Rover EV, even up super-steep inclines.
Photo by: Land Rover
But if you look strictly at the spec sheet, the Range Rover Electric doesn’t come close to the R1S. The Range Rover has 8 inches of ground clearance, a 33.2-degree approach angle, a 28.1-degree departure angle and a 22.3-degree breakover angle. The Rivian has more generous numbers across the board, making it the stronger off-road companion—at least on paper. And that’s fine. The Range Rover is a luxury SUV first, and its off-road capabilities are designed to take it much farther than most owners will ever realistically dare.
Price And Availability
Order books are now open in the U.S., though the timeline for deliveries is still a mystery. What is known is that the Range Rover Electric will not come cheap: $138,000 to start before destination. That’s a solid $25,000 more than an entry-trim Range Rover SE.
There’s no shortage of big, fancy electric SUVs on the market right now, from the Porsche Cayenne Electric to the R1S to the Mercedes G-Class. Arguably, what the U.S. really needs more of are great, affordable options. But if you’re in the market for a large luxury EV, I think the Range Rover Electric will be worth checking out.
Photo by: JLR
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