Range Rover’s first electric SUV has 48,000 pre-orders

By Nick Godt Published November 10, 2024

Land Rover Range Rover Velar SVAutobiography Dynamic Edition — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Range Rover, the brand made famous for its British-styled, luxury, all-terrain SUVs, is keen to show it means business about going electric.

And, according to the most recent investor presentation by parent company JLR, that’s all because Range Rover fans are showing the way. Not only was demand for Range Rover’s hybrid vehicles up 29% in the last six months, but customers are buying hybrids “as a stepping stone towards battery electric vehicles,” the company says.

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As proof, JLR says there are already 48,000 pre-orders for the Range Rover Electric, the brand’s first fully electric vehicle to be launched before year-end.

While the new SUV’s 8000-volt architecture promises fast charging, it’s clear Range Rover still wants it to keep up with the brand’s all-terrain tradition. The luxury SUV also promises to withstand wading through up to 33.4 inches of deep water.

Next year, JLR is also expected to launch an electric Range Rover Sport, sharing the same platform as the Range Rover Electric and existing hybrid vehicles. But it has also launched a new platform that will facilitate further inroads into electrification. The automaker has committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2039.

“JLR is able to offer a range of fuel options to meet the energy transition dynamics of each market, and we will offer a pure electric variant of each nameplate by 2030 with the aim of reaching carbon net zero by 2039,” Mark Camilleri, director of electrification services at JLR, said in a statement.

Further marking JLR’s commitment to electric, the automaker said another smaller Range Rover SUV will be coming out of its new EMA platform by 2026.

That new SUV is expected to be the electric replacement of the Range Rover Velar, according to AutoCar. It will also be the first EV to feature “hands-free, eyes on” technology.

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Freelance reporter

Nick Godt has covered global business news on three continents for over 25 years.

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rivian unmapped roads gen2 r1t gallery image 0

Rivian fans rejoice! Just a few weeks ago, Rivian rolled out automated, hands-off driving for its second-gen R1 vehicles with a game-changing software update. Yet, the new feature, which is only operational on mapped highways, had left many fans craving for more.
Now the company, which prides itself on listening to - and delivering on - what its customers want, didn’t wait long to signal a ‘map-free’ upgrade will be available later this year.
“One feedback we’ve heard loud and clear is that customers love [Highway Assist] but they want to use it in more places,” James Philbin, Rivian VP of autonomy, said on the podcast RivianTrackr Hangouts. “So that’s something kind of exciting we’re working on, we’re calling it internally ‘Map Free’, that we’re targeting for later this year.”
The lag between the release of Highway Assist (HWA) and Map Free automated driving gives time for the fleet of Rivian vehicles to gather ‘unique events’. These events are used to train Rivian’s offline model in the cloud before data is distilled back to individual vehicles.
As Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe explained in early March, HWA marked the very beginning of an expanding automated-driving feature set, “going from highways to surface roads, to turn-by-turn.”
For now, HWA still requires drivers to keep their eyes on the road. The system will send alerts if you drift too long without paying attention. But stay tuned—eyes-off driving is set for 2026.
It’s also part of what Rivian calls its “Giving you your time back” philosophy, the first of three pillars supporting Rivian’s vision over the next three to five years. Philbin says that philosophy is focused on “meeting drivers where they are”, as opposed to chasing full automation in the way other automakers, such as Tesla’s robotaxi, might be doing.
“We recognize a lot of people buy Rivians to go on these adventures, to have these amazing trips. They want to drive, and we want to let them drive,” Philbin says. “But there’s a lot of other driving that’s very monotonous, very boring, like on the highway. There, giving you your time back is how we can give the best experience.”
This will also eventually lead to the third pillar of Rivian’s vision, which is delivering Level 4, or high-automation vehicles: Those will offer features such as auto park or auto valet, where you can get out of your Rivian at the office, or at the airport, and it goes off and parks itself.
While not promising anything, Philbin says he believes the current Gen 2 hardware and platforms should be able to support these upcoming features.
The second pillar for Rivian is its focus on active safety features, as the EV-maker rewrote its entire autonomous vehicle (AV) system for its Gen2 models. This focus allowed Rivian’s R1T to be the only large truck in North America to get a Top Safety Pick+ from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
“I believe there’s a lot of innovation in the active safety space, in terms of making those features more capable and preventing more accidents,” Philbin says. “Really the goal, the north star goal, would be to have Rivian be one of the safest vehicles on the road, not only for the occupants but also for other road users.”

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