Firstly, I declare I am a Land Rover fan – always have been, and owned a Freelander 2 HSE a few years ago.
No doubt these will sell like hot cakes but there’s nothing revolutionary here – if you compare with the Outlander PHEV, Mitsubishi were basically doing this 6 or 7 years ago. The only difference is LR are using a 3-cylinder diesel engine, which may end up being a bit gruff, and an 8-speed auto box, which undoubtedly gives a 0-60 advantage over the Outlander, but at what weight and reliability penalty?
I’m also not sure that you can legitimately add the peak power of both engine and motor to come up with 300+bhp – as a good proportion of the engine’s peak power will be required to supplement the battery when the motor is demanding maximum power. That said, if it can shift one of these lumps up to 60mph in 6.2 seconds then it’s doing something right.
What this is, in reality, is a wakeup call to the industry to push on with new innovation and technology.