A year after driving the Range Rover Electric at Goodwood and being told it was nearly here, Electrifying is back at the same circuit driving its sportier sibling, and the car is still a prototype. The Range Rover Sport EV sits on JLR's MLA platform, the video reports, carries a 118 kWh battery, and makes around 542 horsepower from two motors, one on each axle. JLR has spent four years and more than 60,000 hours of testing on it, the video reports, and along the way abandoned an early configuration that paired an induction motor at the front with a permanent magnet motor at the rear, switching to permanent magnets on both axles after testing. The question the video keeps circling is whether the wait bought anything the market has not already moved past.
The honest caveat is that almost nothing here is confirmed. JLR is holding its numbers back, so the roughly 350 mile range, the 800 volt system and charging up to around 350 kW are the video's informed expectations drawn from the shared platform, not company figures. There is no price and no on-sale date. Electrifying's own guess is around £100,000. The rival numbers it cites are unflattering: a Porsche Cayenne Electric at 410 miles and 390 kW, a Polestar 3 at 373 miles and 350 kW, and a forthcoming BMW iX5 expected at 500 miles and up to 450 kW. Those are worth holding loosely too. And peak kW is a poor proxy for charging time in the first place: the XPENG L03 covered today runs a 400 volt architecture and still claims 10 to 80 percent in about 20 minutes, which is the same ballpark the Sport is expected to manage at 350 kW.
On the driving, the video is warm. It reports four-wheel steering that feels precise through a slalom, notable quietness over gravel with aircraft moving around outside, and single-pedal regen that is well calibrated and brings the car to a smooth, complete stop. Regen has two levels, light and standard, and can be set to come on by default at startup, though the video's criticism is that there are no paddles and no adaptive regen from launch. JLR has not given a weight, but the video assumes it is no lighter than the two plus tons of the plug-in hybrid, and says the mass seems to disappear once moving. The demonstration included JLR's dragon steps and, less conventionally, driving through the fuselage of an aeroplane. The company told the assembled press it is not interested in spec sheet battles, because what its customers asked for was the Range Rover Sport experience, the same but electric.
That philosophy explains more than the driving. JLR has deliberately not followed BMW or Volvo into a separate model line for its EVs, the video says, because customers told it they wanted the same car, only better and electric. Hence a prototype that looks identical to the petrol Sport apart from some lettering and a charge flap. The MLA platform was designed from the outset to take petrol, plug-in hybrid and fully electric powertrains, so the battery is not being shoehorned into a car that never expected one, and the 118 kWh pack sits low without eating the practicality buyers expect. JLR says it could not find an off-the-shelf electric drivetrain that met its performance brief, so it built its own motors and pack. It is also building an ecosystem around the charging experience: a dedicated app, plug and charge at compatible stations, and its own line of home chargers, with the partner not yet named. The video also spots an unexplained S button in the cabin.
Bottom line: JLR is betting its buyers do not read comparison tables, and it is probably right. Nobody cross-shops a Range Rover against a Polestar 3. They cross-shop it against another Range Rover. But four years is four years, and on the figures the video expects, the Sport arrives behind three rivals that are already here or nearly here, into a luxury EV market that has run out of easy money. The car sounds good. The timing is the risk, and refinement cannot fix a calendar.
Commentary on a third-party video. Figures and claims are as presented in the source and have not been independently verified. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it.