Range Rover Electric: TG's first ride in "the ultimate automotive cocoon"

What’s this? Looks very much like a Range Rover…

It is. But it’s actually the long, long awaited fully electric Range Rover. The fact that it looks largely identical to the existing car is deliberate and speaks volumes about JLR’s approach to the RR BEV.

How so?

Because this thing makes the golden goose of lore look non-committal, and the company’s aim in going electric is to deliver a Range Rover, only more so. This is arguably the world’s premier luxury car, eclipsing even the Mercedes S-Class thanks to its commanding driving position and generally imperious manner.

JLR sells 70,000 per year at an average transaction price of £136k, so it’s also a licence to print money. Mind you, just over a third of annual Range Rover production goes to the US, a market JLR recently paused exports to on account of self-styled ‘stable genius’ Donald Trump’s troublesome tariff adventures.

Do we really want an electric Range Rover?

According to JLR, there are 60,000 ‘expressions of interest’. The development team modelled all the dynamic responses of the Range Rover to match its character. There are actually some inherent advantages on the BEV, including a lower centre of gravity, better weight distribution between the axles, and no change in mass depending on fuel load. So the dynamics have actually been tuned with greater precision.

We get the picture. So what can you tell us about it?

A certain amount. TG has been to Arjeplog, 60 miles or so from the Arctic Circle in Swedish Lapland, to get an early look at the new car. The Range Rover BEV is powered by two permanently excited synchronous motors, one on each axle, with a silicon carbide inverter. They’re fed by a double stack 117kWh battery pack, containing 344 prismatic cells, a configuration made possible by the Range Rover’s height. It uses an 800V architecture so it can support charging up to 350kW.

Where’s the tech from?

Rather than sourcing the hardware from an existing supplier, JLR has gone the proprietary route. “We could probably have brought the car to market a year earlier if we’d sourced the batteries externally,” a spokesman tells TG, “but we couldn’t find any that fitted the brief.” The Range Rover does have a pretty specific use case: it has to get properly down and dirty in temperatures ranging between -40 to +50°C.

The car’s clever terrain response and hill descent systems also have to be fully networked into the mainframe. The battery packs will be manufactured at JLR’s facility in Hams Hall until the new gigafactory near Bridgwater in Somerset comes on line some time in 2026.

Punchy. What are the stats?

The total system power output is 542bhp, with 627lb ft of torque. The power electronics are housed in a separate case on top of the battery, where the transmission sits in the existing car. There’s obviously no mechanical link between the front and rear, the electric Range Rover instead using an all-new Independent Driveline Distribution (IDD) system to manage torque flow between the axles, and an Integrated Traction Management (ITM) system that sends a signal to the main ECU within 50 milliseconds to manage… traction.

That sounds impressive.

JLR says it’s 100 times faster in terms of slip management than the ICE equivalent. The engineering team also insists that a dual motor set-up is better than a four motor one – as used by a certain key German rival and some chintzy Chinese newcomers – in terms of first principles of torque distribution, and for packaging and weight reasons.

Torque distribution and vectoring is handled by the IDD software, which does the job of a conventional E-diff for eye-blink-rapid reactions off road. Despite the fragrant luxury and mosaic marquetry inside, full off-road capability remains a cherished Range Rover attribute. Although you won’t be able to do a tank turn in the BEV, which might hobble the Insta-likes a touch.

Anything else of note?

Although the current L460 Range Rover was designed to be an EV from the outset, Land Rover’s engineers have still gone to town on this thing; apparently there are 67 patents on the electric Range Rover. Take, for example, a heat management system called ‘Thermassist’, which decides what temperature the battery ought to be by constantly evaluating more than 700 different parameters. It can recover heat from -10°C, the aim being to improve efficiency, enhance interior comfort, and extend range. Speaking of which, there’s no final word on that yet because the car’s still undergoing homologation. But think somewhere in the region of 330 miles WLTP.

Did you get to drive it?

Yes, but full impressions remain under wraps for now so you’ll have to read between the lines. But given the nature of the Range Rover, a passenger ride in a late-stage prototype is more informative than most. As with the Rolls-Royce Spectre, electrification is a solution that amplifies the Range Rover’s inherent strengths rather than diminishing them. We’re talking class-leading refinement, silky smooth progress, and a studied and expertly engineered ability to repel the horrors of the real world. This is the ultimate automotive cocoon – and one you can drive through a forest or up a mountain. Most likely to the ski chalet in Gstaad.

Did you, erm, ‘experience’ a finished car?

We’re in what’s called an ‘attributes development vehicle’. In fact, TG’s ride is known as a ‘golden car’, of which there are currently very few. It’s taken the learning from 120-odd prototypes and integrated all the attributes. It will then be validated by the various department heads, signed off by the JLR board, at which point it effectively becomes the template for the production car. JLR also points to the data it has gathered from 350 million customer journeys, so it knows how the Range Rover is used in the real world.

Does it feel any different to the existing car?

Yes and no. It really is a Range Rover-Plus. It has the same fabulous interior, though the infotainment set-up – as on the existing car – could be a little more logical. The ‘S’ button by the gear selector is for single pedal driving rather than ‘sport’. Head of vehicle attributes Matt Becker distils the mission aim into two words: “effortless progression”. No-one buys a Range Rover to go chasing lap times or to hunt out favourite B-roads. This is an elegant, almost languorous machine, which is exactly what its owners want.

The regular Range Rover is obviously a hefty beast and can be quite pitch sensitive under throttle load. It’s actually one of the car’s key characteristics, and the sensation is not dissimilar to the one you experience in a powerboat. Now imagine having to deal with 627 torques from standstill.

What changes have been made to accommodate that?

The BEV uses twin rate air springs for more tightly controlled pitch and heave. “With damping there’s a soft curve and a firm curve,” Becker continues, “and the electric Range Rover goes between the two. There’s new software logic on the BEV which looks at the rate of acceleration and then applies the damping more quickly so that the car doesn’t pitch too much. That’s combined with dual rate springs. The bushes at the back have been altered to give the rear axle a bit more honesty.”

There’s also a 60mm difference in the centre of mass, which helps tie the BEV down better. It’s as supremely comfortable as ever without feeling sloppy. “The handling is more linear than the regular car, some of which is down to physics and the difference in inertia,” Becker adds. “But it’s also because of the changes that have been made.”

Presumably you spent most of the time slithering about on a frozen lake.

A fair bit. The BEV uses the same chassis modes as the regular car, so ‘Grass, gravel, snow’, ‘Dynamic’, and ‘Dynamic with everything off’. It’s pretty clear that the new control systems are extremely well integrated, and that electric propulsion is as natural as breathing for the Range Rover. The regular RR has deliberately low-geared steering and only very minor tweaks have been made here. The axles stay wonderfully in phase. Throttle tip-in and -out feels – as far as we can tell – perfectly calibrated.

Is it fast?

Enough. This is categorically not one of those EVs that pulverises your neck muscles, though it’s certainly brisk. ITM and IDD, says JLR, has opened up new vistas of chassis tuning. The body control has really been polished, and it feels it. Get brave with the drive modes and it’ll also drift, which is an unusual sensation in a Range Rover that’s pushing three tonnes (no confirmation on the exact weight yet).

On a 28° incline, with a ‘split mu’ surface (frozen ice on one side and normal tarmac on the other), the thing just hauls itself up, magically conjuring traction out of a nightmarish scenario. There’s little sense of all that software code going berserk in the background, but it sure must be busy. The single pedal drive mode is novel, and you can adjust the level of braking regen via the main screen. But it’s not one of the car’s prime USPs.

And off-road?

We did go off-piste. The key to progress here is low speed wheel control and how swiftly wheel slip can be detected. As already noted, the BEV’s ITM means this happens 100 times faster than on the combustion car. On rough terrain it’ll detect the slip within 50 milliseconds, and respond to it in one millisecond. From a driveability point of view, you barely even notice the throttle application. And the electric motors mean there’s loads of low end torque – and instantaneous control of it.

That also means increased confidence if you’re dealing with an off-road ‘event’. It feels more intuitive, an impression you’d appreciate on sand and other tricky terrain. Remember, there’s no air to suck through the engine or turbo to spool up. The hill descent has also been recalibrated to work with the single pedal driving functionality. “We’re not doing a virtual diff here, we’re trying to control the slip,” Jason Walters, who’s overseen the RR BEV’s off-road evolution, tells us. “It’s not really mimicking a diff, it’s exercising control over slip in a different, faster way.”

Nice job, all in all.

It is. Obviously there’s a whole load more we need to determine when we get to drive the finished thing. But from this icy passenger-seated perspective, the Range Rover and electrification feel like they’re made for each other. It’s quieter, even smoother, better off-road, and more efficient. What’s not to love?