I drove the new Range Rover Sport Electric through a plane

Time moves quickly in the car business. Unless you’re Range Rover.

A year ago, I had my first experience of the world’s first fully electric Range Rover. I drove the British brand’s new battery-powered range topper at the Goodwood Circuit – not on the race track but over a carefully curated 4x4 course that was designed to showcase the new model’s off-road prowess. I was impressed.

Since then, nothing more has been said about the Range Rover Electric that was expected to be on sale by now. The silence has been deafening, even though the company claims over 77,000 potential buyers have ‘expressed their interest’ in the new car.

So, what’s gone wrong? “We wanted to take more time to make it a proper Range Rover,” Martin Limpert, managing director of Range Rover, told me, promising that first deliveries will now be in 2027.

It was a bit of a surprise, then, when Range Rover invited me back to the Goodwood Motor Circuit once again to try something else: the Range Rover Sport Electric.

Now, Range Rover and Range Rover Sport share plenty including their clever MLA platforms that allow for everything from electric to petrol and diesel – and hybrids in between – plus a production line in Solihull.

So, just as night follows day, it was obvious that an all-electric Range Rover Sport would be following its bigger sibling. But before the full-size Range Rover Electric had officially been released? That’s just a bit odd.

Still, I’m never going to turn down the chance to get behind the wheel of any new Range Rover – it’s still my lottery-winning car of choice, even considering continued reliability concerns. In my view, nobody does that modern luxury thing better – and, in a bizarre way, I would take that reliability risk as the cars are so good.

I’m also never going to turn down the chance for another blast around the super-fast Goodwood circuit, especially in a Range Rover badge that’s been honed by JLR’s vehicle engineering director, Matt Becker.

I’ve known Becker for longer than we’d care to admit, through his Lotus days where he made his name, via Aston Martin and now at JLR. He’s been responsible for the dynamic brilliance of most modern cars from those great British brands, and has already impressed me this year with the all-electric Jaguar Type 01 prototype that I’ve been in. This latest adventure was going to be fun.

Fun, but not normal. For starters, the car was facing the wrong way in the Goodwood pit lane, and there was a plane’s fuselage right across the long back straight – I’d be driving through that, apparently!

There were numerous other trials from a ‘dragon challenge’ up and down a set of steps, smart cones that would tell me which way to turn at a moment’s notice, the usual slaloms, a trip across gravel, grass and tarmac, and a standing start thrown in for good measure. In short, Goodwood’s circuit had been turned into Matt Becker’s playground.

But first, the car: what was Becker’s aim with the Range Rover Sport Electric?

“We’re trying to put a little bit more distance between the Range Rover and Range Rover Sport,” he told me. “And it’s not just software tweaks, there are hardware changes, too, to make the car more dynamic. That also helps us to improve the steering.”

That doesn’t mean Range Rover is going hardcore and hunting for the Porsche Cayenne, though. “It’s still a Range Rover,” Becker assured me.

According to Range Rover, the Sport is the most dynamic expression of the Range Rover brand, while the full-size Range Rover is the purest. And Martin Limpert reiterates Matt Becker’s comments about the Sport “moving apart from Range Rover in terms of sportiness and visceral feel.”

However, there is still much shared between those electric Range Rovers including the 118.5kWh battery feeding electric motors to produce 543bhp. Not much more information – including price – will be shared before the Range Rover Sport’s full reveal towards the end of September.

Out on today’s heavily modified Goodwood circuit, the usual benefits of the Range Rover Sport – combined with Becker and his team’s upgrades and that new electric powertrain – are all immediately obvious.

We start with a quick series of turns that instantly highlight the Sport’s low speed manoeuvrability – with the help of four-wheel steering. The car feels slightly sharper to react with slightly less body roll – a bit of a physical feat given the size, weight and height of the car – while the steering has a touch more responsiveness.

Range Rover has avoided the temptation to add in neck-snapping acceleration – it could’ve been done, Becker told me, but the team preferred a more linear acceleration curve that doesn’t drop off so quickly as speed rises. I get that.

The silence is always a bit odd when you’re in a car that usually has a soundtrack – although there will be some added fake noise available apparently – and the interior of the Range Rover Sport, although not quite as plush as the Range Rover, is always impressive with that distinctive, tasteful, British luxury look and feel (although I’m not convinced by the lack of buttons no matter how good Range Rover say its touchscreen tech is).

We travel eerily silently over some gravel that confirms the ride quality is as good as ever and try out the one-pedal driving mode – which customers, if not Becker, were crying out for.

That works fine, but it’s activated by putting the gear selector into a mode marked S… Surely it should be B for extra braking?

Anyway, the car feels more impressive than ever with its mix of potent power, unnatural nimbleness for such a sizeable car, lovely ride comfort and new-found silence. Then it’s on to the dragon steps, where the electric drivetrain proves the point that it’s more controllable doing serious off-roading at slow speeds.

Of course, there are myriad computer-controlled all-terrain modes and camera options that help flatter my driving skills, but what looks a frankly bizarre manoeuvre from the outside all feels remarkably controlled and composed on the inside.

The sprint test also proves that the new Range Rover Sport Electric is plenty fast enough, thank you. And then I come across a ruddy great big plane across the middle of the track with a hole in its side that I’m supposed to drive through.

It’ll be tight, I’m warned, but with a man outside to guide me, inch-perfect, up the ramp, I suddenly find myself sitting in a car, inside the middle of a wide-bodied jet with rows of airline seats either side of me. That’s just bizarre.

I’m warned to take my exit through the other side of the plane very slowly as the ramp down shoves the back of the car up and I could wipe the shark-fin aerial off the top of the car on the plane’s fuselage.

Thankfully, the mix of the car’s ability and my (ahem) skill behind the wheel means we’re safely through and powering towards Goodwood’s unforgiving final chicane. The brakes do their job well (and apparently the work the electric motors do to slow the car means the brakes could last the lifetime of the car) and it’s back to the pit lane.

The Range Rover Sport Electric is a seriously talented piece of kit, but the jury’s out on some of the more important things that EV buyers of all types of cars at all prices want to know: how does range and charging stack up in the real world. My feelings were pretty similar at the end of my Range Rover Electric experience a year ago, and we’re no closer to finding out any more on that car just yet.

This time around the promises seem to be delivered with more serious intent. We’ll find out later in the year when we get to drive production versions of both cars on road and off. And the first electric Range Rover deliveries for Range Rover and Range Rover Sport will be next year. Let’s hope that’s definitely the case this time.

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