Land Rover Range_e Hybrid at Geneva

February 16, 2011 By Cars UK

The Range Rover Sport based Land Rover Range_e at Geneva

Land rover are to debut their plug-in hybrid Range Rover Sport – the Range_e – at Geneva, together with the Evoque, Discovery Landmark and Range Rover Ultimate.

More ‘Green’ goodness at Geneva, this time it’s Land Rover taking along a ‘Green’ Range Rover Sport.

Just like every other car maker, Land Rover is looking to game the taxation system and produce hybrid vehicles that offer headline figures on CO2 and MPG that appeal to customers and appease the taxman. Land Rover’s answer is the Land Rover Range_e Hybrid.

As we revealed back in June last year, the Range_e is a Range Rover Sport that’s had hybrid gubbins attached, and which has been running around the place testing the setup.

The setup is the regular 3.0 litre diesel V6 with a plug-in parallel diesel hybrid system with a 34hp electric motor on a common driveshaft which can offer a 20 mile EV-only range. Land Rover aren’t saying whether they’re running the cooking version of the V6 or the full fat 271bhp version.

With the full fat 271bhp V6 this Range_e would not just be the ‘cleanest’ Range Rover Sport by far with just 89g/km CO2, but also the quickest. Which is the sort of hybrid we rather like.

We’re guessing that the public showing of the Range_e means that Land Rover are chuffed with its development and we’re not too far away from a production version.

Also on offer at Geneva from Land Rover will be the Range Rover Evoque (we’re also promised pricing ahead of the UK launch), the uber-expensive Range Rover Ultimate and the Land Rover Discovery 4 Landmark Limited Editions.

But it’s the Range_e that will get most attention.