In Europe, need to have a consistently hefty bank account to afford to run a V8-powered Range Rover, or Range Rover Sport, and that’s why everybody here just gets the diesels, which are far more efficient (the V6 in particular), and has enough torque to not feel too slow, especially now that more aluminum than ever is used in their construction.
Moreover, they’re going one step further with the idea of efficient driving being feasible in a large SUV, with their new diesel-hybrid system that has so far been featured on the big Range and the (still misleadingly named) Sport.
They need to do this, because the competition is doing it too, and because it does show results, albeit much better ones in lab tests than in real life. Regardless, these diesel-hybrid Range Rovers would make a lot of sense on US roads too, and according to The Detroit Bureau, this scenario has a high chance of taking a turn for the real, at a “yet-unspecified date.”
I mean really, efficiency gains of 26 percent over the regular diesel-powered equivalents are not negligible by any stretch, and in the US, people would mostly buy it for the Range Rover image, boosted by the locally-important trait of also being a hybrid.
As Jay Leno put it, “in America, everybody wants to others to see the good work you’re doing anonymously.” Not even the higher price of the system would deter buyers from getting it, according to some, since it cumulates the higher cost associated with diesel engines, as well as that for hybrids too, so it’s even more expensive than either taken separately.
By Andrei Nedelea
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