And out goes the venerable V6.
It’s been a long time coming, but British marque Range Rover has finally gotten round to canning its 6-cylinder Ford-era engines and replacing them with units of their own. The straight-6 Ingenium engines were first introduced in the Range Rover Sport, but that’s now been shoehorned into the front of the full-fat Range Rover.
Gone is the old supercharged V6 engine, replaced with an all-new Ingenium inline-6 mill. Measuring 3.0-litres in capacity, the new engine features a twin-scroll turbocharger and an electric supercharger. The latter runs off the car’s 48V electrical system, and is able to spool up in just half a second to provide near-instant throttle response.
As part of that 48V system, you’ll find a battery, a regenerative braking system, and a small electric motor mounted within the gearbox. That small motor provides immediate torque at low-speeds (reducing engine load during takeoff), and allows the engine to shut off as you coast to a halt. The Ingenium I-6 also packs JLR’s variable valve lift & timing technologies, resulting in a 12% CO2 emissions reduction, while adding a particulate filter can reduce the causticity of the car’s farts by 75%.
It’s not all hug-the-polarbears though, as the new 3.0-litre is properly quick. There’s 294kW and 550Nm on tap, easily eclipsing the supercharged V6. In the Range Rover, that means the century sprint is cued up in just 5.9-seconds, while V-max is rated at 225km/h. An eight-speed auto and all-wheel drive system ensure all that ferocity is transferred to the road, which is clear by the fact that it’s actually faster than the smaller Range Rover Sport with the same engine that sits beneath it in the range.
The model-year update doesn’t just bring the new engine though. There’s also a new ‘smartphone pack’ option that bundles in smartphone mirroring, intelligent-beam LED headlights that can dim-out signposts as well as ‘Tourist Mode,’ that set up the lights to drive on the opposite side of the road if necessary (not here, though).
Jaguar-Land Rover Australia has not clarified when the local Range Rover will offer this new engine, but we assume that it ought to be here by year-end. We’ll update you when we hear back from JLR.
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