First drive: Is the Range Rover Electric the ultimate luxury car?
July 15, 2025 by Darren Cassey
Car changing is a big deal
Reviews editor Darren Cassey has been given early access to the next generation of luxury motoring, but does this Range Rover Electric prototype live up to the expectation?
Range Rover. Electric. On paper, the combination should be perfect – one of the most iconic luxury cars ever made paired with the silent, smooth running of electric motors.
It’s been a long time coming, though, because Range Rover buyers are exacting – you don’t drop six figures on a car and accept compromise, whether that be on range or even the ability to go far, far off the beaten track.
But the Range Rover Electric is here – almost – and we’ve been behind the wheel. Climb inside and everything is present and correct from the existing petrol and diesel-powered versions. That means exquisite materials everywhere you look and touch, with the only giveaway that all is not what it seems being the big red ‘stop’ plunger that points to this being a prototype.
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It’s what you can’t see that’s perhaps most impressive, though. No off the shelf parts could meet Jaguar Land Rover’s expectations, so the electric motors and batteries are all developed and built in-house, at the company’s factory near Wolverhampton.
Unsurprisingly, the battery is massive. This is a big, heavy car, so you need a big battery to get a decent range between charges. A usable capacity of 118kWh is one of the biggest on sale, and over twice what you’d get in a typical small electric hatchback.
Range is yet to be confirmed for production, but the engineers are targeting comfortably over 300 miles. The Mercedes EQS gets almost 500 miles from the same-sized battery, which perhaps tells you not to expect the last word in all-electric efficiency from the Range Rover Electric.
Still, with 550hp from a motor on each axle, it has the power to match the snarling V8-engined Range Rover models, and they’re no fuel-sipping Toyota Prius.
If you’re road tripping, fast charging up to 350kW means the Range Rover Electric can take full advantage of the very fastest public chargers available in the UK, and you should be back up to 80% capacity before the barista can even sprinkle chocolate on your service station cappuccino.
Not that we’ve been anywhere near a motorway to put the range to the test just yet. Being top secret prototypes, our drive was limited to a quiet corner of the Goodwood Motor Circuit, away from the hustle and bustle of the Festival of Speed across the road.
From the driver’s seat there’s nothing to distinguish the Electric from the rest of the range. Even the gear selector is the same, so you slot it into D for Drive and get going. The only difference is that here, the S beside it stands for ‘single pedal driving’ instead of ‘Sport’, which means the regenerative braking ramps up and can bring you to a stop without needing to press the brake.
This is particularly useful for making driving around town easier, which is where, let’s be honest, this humungous SUV will spend most of its time. But it’s also useful off-road, where the Range Rover, historically, must excel.
Electric motors are actually better for off-roading than traditional combustion engines, because the software running them can offer millimetric control of how the power is divvied out. There’s no need for a low range gearbox for particularly low grip situations, just change the drive mode through the central screen and you have all the control you need.
Our course involved a series of man-made obstacles that demonstrated the various ways the car’s electronic brain could work in tandem with its motors to get you out of trouble. The first rocked the car from side to side, leaving one wheel hanging five feet off the ground before crashing back to Earth. The traction management system adapts everything every millisecond, so the moment the wheel leaves the surface and becomes useless, power is sent to the wheels that can help get you out of trouble.
Next up, a 26-degree climb that felt almost vertical, made all the more complicated by a low-slip surface on one side, meaning some tyres had more grip than others. Again, the Range Rover creeped up with such little fuss that if I hadn’t watched the staff spray the hose on the hill ahead of us I might have assumed they were fibbing about the low grip bit.
The next obstacles combined these disciplines and the Range Rover Electric continued to pass with flying colours. Okay, so much of this ability will be pointless to 99% of buyers, as is the fact you can wade through water to 900mm, just like you can in the combustion versions, but knowing you could is what makes the Range Rover stand out. And protecting the battery, which sits in the floor, from potential rock strikes means it should be incredibly safe in the event of a crash, too.
Our short test can’t definitively answer whether this is the ultimate luxury car, particularly as most of our time with the car was focused on its off-road ability, but the early signs are excellent. With propulsion as smooth as the suspension and no engine rumbling away in the background, the Electric feels a lot like what the Range Rover has always been working towards.
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