The Electric Range Rover Might Have Four Motors

The first-ever production Range Rover Electric is getting closer to reality. Land Rover is conducting hot weather testing with a handful of prototypes in the United Arab Emirates. Well, it’s happening. The Range Rover, a vehicle that’s widely recognized as one of the poshest, most comfortable and off-road capable SUVs in the world, is getting an all-electric version. But you’d be forgiven for believing that the Range Rover Electric–that’s the official name–is powered by anything but dinosaur juice.

That’s because the battery-powered Range Rover looks exactly like its gas-powered counterpart. At least, that’s what I’m getting from the latest batch of official photos released by Land Rover. The electric Range Rover prototypes are currently undergoing hot weather testing in the United Arab Emirates, and the British marque seems to think there’s no point in keeping the luxury EV under wraps anymore–because it’s exactly like the ICE SUV we already know.

Take a look for yourself. All the official images are in the gallery below, and apart from a couple of add-on monitoring devices that are to be expected on development prototypes, the Range Rover Electric is the same elegant SUV that’s become a staple of understated luxury–and massive depreciation rates, but that’s another story.

We still don’t know what’s under the skin of the big electric SUV, but Land Rover mentioned the Range Rover EV will get something called Intelligent Torque Management. According to the automaker, the system distributes the wheel slip management task to each individual electric drive control unit, reducing the torque reaction time at each wheel from around 100 milliseconds to as little as 1 millisecond.

That’s mighty impressive. It also sounds a lot like the Range Rover Electric will have four motors, possibly one for each wheel, something we’ve only seen on a handful of production vehicles so far, including the Rivian R1S Quad-Motor, Rimac Nevera and Mercedes-Benz G580 with EQ Technology. (Try saying that three times in a row.)

Gallery: Range Rover Electric prototypes hot weather testing

This is still unconfirmed, so take it with a grain of salt. The size of the battery and the power of the electric motors are still unknown. That said, I wouldn’t expect record-breaking driving range figures, seeing how the gas-powered Range Rover is already quite heavy, tipping the scales at around 5,000 pounds. Adding a big battery will only make the thing harder to move, which will surely take a toll on the range. 

But in the luxury world, it seems that going very far on a full charge isn’t quite as important as the experience itself. Just look at the Rolls-Royce Spectre–it weighs a healthy 6,600 pounds and can go up to 277 miles on a full charge. That hasn’t stopped Rolls-Royce from posting record sales, though.