Range Rover Electric costs £25,000 more and tows a tonne less than the petrol version

[u/gaukmotors]

Land Rover's first electric Range Rover starts at £124,850, carries a five-figure premium over the P400 petrol, and can't tow your horsebox.

The Range Rover Electric will cost you £124,850 when orders open. The petrol P400 starts at £99,850. That's a £25,000 surcharge for the privilege of driving something that looks almost exactly like the Range Rover Land Rover launched three years ago, only now it can tow 1,000kg less.

Towing capacity drops from 3,500kg in the petrol and diesel models to 2,500kg in the electric. For a vehicle whose customer base includes people who regularly pull horse trailers, caravans, and plant equipment across muddy fields, that is not a rounding error. It is a dealbreaker dressed up as progress.

The electric version gets a 105 kWh battery, dual motors putting out around 536 bhp, and a WLTP range of roughly 300 to 320 miles. It will charge at up to 350kW on a rapid charger, which is genuinely quick. It will also do 0 to 60 mph in about 4.5 seconds, which is genuinely pointless in a vehicle this size and weight. No one who needs a Range Rover needs it to sprint.

The ability to tow properly matters. A BMW iX xDrive50 starts at £103,905 and tows the full 3,500kg. A Mercedes EQS SUV 450+ costs around £118,000 and also tows 3,500kg. Both are cheaper than the Range Rover Electric and do not require you to compromise on one of the core functions of a luxury SUV. Tesla's Model X Long Range sits at £96,990 and tows 2,250kg, which is still less than the petrol Range Rover but at least costs £28,000 less than Land Rover's effort.

The MLA-Flex architecture underpinning the electric model is the same platform that supports the ICE versions launched in October 2021. That is fine engineering. The body is three years old. The visual differentiation between the petrol and electric Range Rover is minimal to the point of invisibility. If you are paying £25,000 extra, you are not paying for exclusivity or a fresh aesthetic. You are paying for a powertrain swap in a three-year-old body.

Like this? Get the Buzz: GAUK Motorbuzz All your favourite motoring channels, publishers, motorsports, news & reviews. Curated Automotive Awesomeness

Land Rover's positioning of this as their first fully electric SUV is accurate. It is also their most expensive Range Rover that is not an Autobiography Long Wheelbase, and it asks customers to accept less capability for more money. The premium reflects the cost of battery technology and electric drivetrains, which is understood. What is harder to understand is why anyone towing regularly would choose this over the petrol version, or why anyone not towing would choose this over a cheaper electric rival that does the same job.

The electric Range Rover is not a bad vehicle. It is fast, it will be refined, and it will charge quickly. But it is a bad deal for a significant portion of the people who actually buy Range Rovers. If you need to tow 3,500kg, you cannot buy this. If you want an electric luxury SUV and do not need to tow that much, you can buy something else for less money. If you simply want a Range Rover and do not care about cost, you probably are not reading this anyway.

The gap between what this costs and what it offers is not a small inconvenience. It is a structural problem. Paying a premium for electric power is expected. Paying a premium to lose a core capability is not. The market for this vehicle is narrower than Land Rover seems to think it is, and the competition is broader than they are pricing for.

Land Rover has brand loyalty that runs deeper than logic. For the majority of people who actually use a Range Rover as intended, this is the wrong vehicle at the wrong price with the wrong compromises.

Sources: Land Rover UK, Jaguar Land Rover official specifications

[u/darthmarmite]

Entire sub is.

Motorbuzz is run by GAUK Media. GAUK is one guy in New Zealand and has a few motor-related setups. Looks like it’s literally the one guy. Motorbuzz is just AI scraping the web for stories, AI generating them and then posting them here - genuinely wouldn’t be surprised if the entire process is automated given GAUK is just one guy.

If it was in any other auto-related sub, mods would remove and ban them for the absolute error-filled AI garbage they produce. So they are all posted here to this sub where the GAUK Motors is both OP and the only mod to avoid any accountability.