In fact, over a two-hour journey that mixed country roads, motorways and urban streets (plus, and this doubtless helped, a lengthy stretch of roadworks that kept us pegged to a stately 80km/h) we managed to average 7.0 litres per 100km, or 40mpg for those still viewing this in black and white. The big Range Rover Sport, by odd contrast, proved to be much, much more frugal than claimed, and indeed than we expected. Usually such claims are rubbish in the wrong direction, by which we mean that, in the real world, the car will be much, much thirstier than claimed. It meets the latest, and incredibly tough, RDE2 (Real-world Driving Experience) emissions tests (which govern, in particular, its emissions of harmful nitrogen oxide, or NOx) and, says Land Rover, is capable of averaging 9.2 litres per 100km in fuel economy. This, using a compact battery and a beefed-up starter motor, can more energetically use the stop-start system when crawling in traffic, and can feed in a little extra torque when accelerating hard, helping to save a little fuel. That’s because its new 3.0-litre straight-six diesel engine (badged D350 because it develops 350hp, along with a whopping 700Nm of torque) does use a 48V mild-hybrid system. Even this Range Rover Sport – fully dressed in ‘Firenze Red’ for the ultimate in pantomime climate villainy – is now at least partially electric. It now offers a plug-in-hybrid variant of almost everything it sells (the new Defender being the only hold-out, and a PHEV version of that is imminent) and fully electric vehicles are in the works. Land Rover is moving in the right direction. Something that’s the size of a sideways tower block, and fuelled by the devil’s juice (or, as we used to call it, diesel), is going to draw eyes of ire from every denizen of the pavement. You do start to wonder whether Land Rover ought to start selling an optional paper bag – with precisely located bespoke eyeholes – with each Range Rover that it sells. Surely, being seen driving something as obviously profligate as this new Range Rover Sport D350 now verges on the socially unacceptable?įorget the arguments about how much damage lithium mining for batteries does to the environment, forget how few Land Rovers, and especially Range Rovers, are sold each year compared with the millions and millions of supposedly saintly smaller vehicles.
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