Next to some of its cousins the P400e’s numbers may look meek but its power delivery that’s infused with electric propulsion is anything but. The shove is positively robust, smooth and finely balanced across the slimmer power band and managed by an eight-speed automatic transmission with silky smooth changes.
It does its thing silently and intuitively and it’ll dash from standstill to 100km/h in 6.8sec and reach a top speed of 220km/h.
It has engine modes; the essential ones being those directly linked to efficiency. In hybrid mode the petrol and electric motors work hand-in-hand to power this permanently 4x4-driven barge. Brake energy recuperation recharges the battery pack or you can plug it into an electric wall socket, where it will take 14 hours to charge from zero to full.
Or, using a wallbox AC charger it takes five to six hours to charge fully (you can’t charge it using DC fast chargers found mostly at public charging stations).
With a full charge this Range Rover phev has about 40km of real world pure electric drive, but weighing 2.5 tons, understandably the juice won’t last long.
Though it is nowhere near newer German phev range benchmarks of 100km of pure electric drive, it is among the finest and cleverest systems I’ve encountered.
Under normal load conditions the system prioritises the optimisation of the fuel consumption of its petrol motor, drawing heavily from the battery pack and adding to rapid depletion of the batteries.
It’s best left in its normal hybrid mode because the fair value in returns was an 11,7l/100km average, which is exceptional for such a jumbo-sized vehicle.
If you want, during highway driving you can press a save button on the EV menu and store the electric charge to be used at a later stage, like when driving through urban zones.
Range Rovers will likely spend 100% of their time wafting through leafy suburbs instead of ploughing through offroad trails, but the P400e is equipped with mountaineering tools like low-range gearing, height-adjustable air suspension and a Terrain Response system.
So, what to make of the P400e? In practice it’s just as much a Range Rover as the others but buyers will need to really decide how much they want its lower running costs over the delicious ferocity of the V8, the middle-order V6 or the diesel V8 with its big torque lashings.
Despite the huge positives in efficiency, I suspect most buyers will continue to gaze at the top of the pile and lust after the supercharged juggernaut anyway.
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