Living with a Range Rover Evoque: is this the perfect plug-in hybrid runaround?

Christmas is a funny time for an automotive journalist, because while we spend the rest of the year driving around in cars to review, the holiday season is where the wheels of the industry come to a festive halt. That was bad news for me, with a busy year end – including a house move in the mix – meaning that I needed a practical car to cover a lot of mileage in.

Enter the team at Land Rover, who were gracious enough to offer me a Range Rover Evoque PHEV as a runaround over Christmas and the New Year. A small, fairly spacious and comfortable SUV for a month sounded like a proper result, but without access to a home charger, the prospect of a plug-in hybrid car to deal with raised question marks in my mind.

Nonetheless, my time with the Evoque got off to a flying start. I wasn’t keen on the car’s shade of bronze in photos, but in person I have to admit the baby Range Rover looked excellent. It turned a lot of heads and even earned praise from total strangers when out and about.

I wasn’t quite as convinced by the interior, that being said. There’s plenty of plush upholstery and the seats are very comfortable, but the dashboard is plain to the point of being boring. It would look better with different colour leather to break up the dark expanse in there, but the all-black finish is a bit dull.

For what’s supposed to be a posh SUV, there are a few too many scratchy plastics dotted around the cabin, and considering a trim panel dropped out from under the dashboard one evening, I do wonder how durable everything will be in the long term.

I found the Evoque very pleasant to drive, especially considering the battered, bumpy roads in the part of North London where I live. The big tyres help absorb potholes, and while you can feel rough surfaces through the seats and steering wheel, it’s excellent at soaking up speed bumps.

It’s practical enough to deal with annoying daily tasks, too. Part of moving house meant doing a big ol’ tip run to get rid of old furniture, garden waste and assorted junk from the garage. The plug-in hybrid model loses the underfloor storage of the petrol and diesel models, but even then there was plenty of space when loading up to the roof – and the handy rear-view camera in the central mirror meant I could still see what was behind me.

But my biggest concern with the plug-in hybrid was living with it without easy access to a home charger. Land Rover claims a 39-mile range to a charge, which I found a bit optimistic in the real world. I made it around 25 miles on a full battery, but that didn’t matter much to me because charging wasn’t anywhere near as much of a faff as I thought it would be.

London’s outrageous parking prices worked to the Evoque PHEV’s favour, filling the battery at a kerbside charger cost me as much as two hours of paid parking – which took the sting out of public charging, and meant I could park for as long as necessary. Lovely.

Add to that the heated windscreen which dealt with the frosty morning ice with ease and the Evoque did me well as a winter daily driver. I’m still not convinced that the PHEV is the model to go for if you don’t have a home charger, because trying to ration the battery by driving on ‘save’ mode simply tanks your fuel economy, while the price of public charging can’t offset the extra purchase price compared to a petrol or diesel.

What I can say, however, is that I’d choose a Range Rover Evoque over a Lexus UX, Mercedes EQA or a BMW X2. But I wouldn’t have any of them as a plug-in hybrid.

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*Savings are made up of the maximum dealer discount off RRP – subject to dealership, location and trim. Prices correct at the time of writing.