2012 Land Rover Range Rover

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It doesn't have the raw power or the handling precision of its German competition, and America's plushest, biggest SUV offerings have more room. Still, the 2012 Range Rover is one of the most capable, most luxurious sport-utility vehicles available, whether it's used on-road or off-pavement.

Sleek in its slab-sidedness, the Range Rover artfully adapts its heritage cues to a spare modern style--and that makes it a unique and eye-catching piece, one that's recognizable at first glance.

Performance is excellent, in a straight line or around corners, on dry roads or wet, muddy trails. It seems up for any task, and it's one of the few truly capable SUVs left when it comes to the "utility" part of the equation, its off-road technology the most sophisticated in the class, and clearly oriented around its maximum capabilities, not watered down.

The Range Rover's also downright opulent inside, with excellent fit and finish and plenty of room for five passengers. It won't seat seven, though, and the cargo space can seem a little small to anyone who's used a GL-Class or an Escalade for more than profiling.

There's no crash-test data in its corner, but the Range Rover has a standard safety package strong enough to recommend it--with the newer frills like rearview cameras and blind-spot monitors much appreciated.

Luxury and entertainment features abound, as you'd expect for the class, but sometimes the Range Rover's high-tech pieces trip over themselves with kludgy functionality. In some ways, it's a rolling supercomputer, but the displays from its foot-wide touchscreen could move along faster. Its harman/kardon 720-watt audio system? Nearly perfect.

The big Achilles heel of the Range Rover is in gas mileage. At 12/18 mpg, it's low even for the class, and we've typically observed real-world numbers closer to its combined 14-mpg EPA rating. So long as you budget in some fuel along with its $80,000 purchase price--$170,000 if you want the ultra-luxe Autobiography edition--the Range Rover won't fail to proceed, nor will it fail to please.

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2012 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque

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BMW X6s and Infiniti FXes of the present, AMC Eagles of the past--the coupe-like crossover vehicle is a trend that's been in gestation a long, long time. And man, has it produced some ugly offspring.

Now it's spawned the 2012 Range Rover Evoque, and finally, at long last, it makes hot sexy sense. 

The Evoque may be the first truly sensuous SUV in history. It's a captivating stiletto heel in a closet full of Land Rover earth shoes. Some loose family features are appliqued on its taut, angular body--one that, you won't be surprised to hear, has a fan in the form of taut, angular hominid Victoria Beckham. But those are mostly for show, little geocaching leftovers of Range Rover's past. This soft-roader is all about tomorrow, and it lives to be seen with every hair in place, not covered in muck.

Erase some of the Rover-bred notions you've applied to the Evoque's performance, the ones that imply trucky handling and rustic V-8 torque. There's even less Landie here. Derived from the LR2, the Evoque throws down an entirely fascinating new gauntlet with its 240-horsepower, turbocharged four-cylinder. It's coarse on the go, with plenty of drivetrain noise and noticeable turbo lag, but the smallville drivetrain gives up nothing to the heavier, less strong LR2 and it sets the Evoque apart from the bigger Rovers that luxuriate in eight-cylinder streams of torque. It's an urgent, attention-craving piece, as whizzy as an Acura RDX, with similar fuel economy of 19/28 mpg.

All-weather traction is a forte, given its Terrain Response dial-a-mode all-wheel-drive system, and the Evoque's steering does a great imitation of the units in compact Volvos and Fords. The light touch follows through to the most dynamic model, with its magnetically-controlled suspension and muted, supple ride. And it still has more than eight inches of ground clearance, should you get high-centered on some of the last-season stuff stacked on the curb at Saks.

If you expect to give up a lot, other than extra cash, to fit into the Evoque lifestyle, you may want to try one on for size first. There's less room than the LR2, but the Evoque is wider, so overall interior volume isn't intolerable. Up front it's quite comfortable for adults, a little less so in the back seat but not objectionably so, so long as you've bought into the coupe-like premise. What's not easy to swallow is a big adult gut, if you have to clamber into the back seat of three-door Evoques. Meanwhile, the car itself can tote almost a couple dozen cubic feet of luggage, no matter which body you choose.

Land Rover's tackling the brand-stretching Evoque launch with three models and those two body styles. The five-door comes in Pure, Prestige and Dynamic models; the two-door skips Prestige trim. All versions have the standard-issue power features, entertainment features like Bluetooth, USB, and an LCD touchscreen to drive the Meridian audio system as well as phone and optional hard-drive navigation systems. Opt for Pure or Dynamic versions if you want splashy colors with twists of Alexander McQueen; get into a Prestige if your turn-ons include libraries, mahogany paneling, and anything by Laura Bennett. By any means possible, spend up for the panoramic roof, and let it light up the cocoon-like cockpit.

It's toyed with hybrid concepts, but now Land Rover can lay claim to the greening of SUVs, since the Range Rover Evoque's slimmed-down body and downsized drivetrain pay it forward with better gas mileage and, by extension, a happy planet. But the Evoque does something even more historic: it shifts the whole Range Rover brand out of the SUV muck, and pitches it into the future on a savvy, fashion-forward bias.

View the original article here

2012 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque

See What the
Rest of the Web Says We've gathered reviews from Edmunds.com, Cars.com plus live Tweets on this car. See What We Found »

BMW X6s and Infiniti FXes of the present, AMC Eagles of the past--the coupe-like crossover vehicle is a trend that's been in gestation a long, long time. And man, has it produced some ugly offspring.

Now it's spawned the 2012 Range Rover Evoque, and finally, at long last, it makes hot sexy sense. 

The Evoque may be the first truly sensuous SUV in history. It's a captivating stiletto heel in a closet full of Land Rover earth shoes. Some loose family features are appliqued on its taut, angular body--one that, you won't be surprised to hear, has a fan in the form of taut, angular hominid Victoria Beckham. But those are mostly for show, little geocaching leftovers of Range Rover's past. This soft-roader is all about tomorrow, and it lives to be seen with every hair in place, not covered in muck.

Erase some of the Rover-bred notions you've applied to the Evoque's performance, the ones that imply trucky handling and rustic V-8 torque. There's even less Landie here. Derived from the LR2, the Evoque throws down an entirely fascinating new gauntlet with its 240-horsepower, turbocharged four-cylinder. It's coarse on the go, with plenty of drivetrain noise and noticeable turbo lag, but the smallville drivetrain gives up nothing to the heavier, less strong LR2 and it sets the Evoque apart from the bigger Rovers that luxuriate in eight-cylinder streams of torque. It's an urgent, attention-craving piece, as whizzy as an Acura RDX, with similar fuel economy of 19/28 mpg.

All-weather traction is a forte, given its Terrain Response dial-a-mode all-wheel-drive system, and the Evoque's steering does a great imitation of the units in compact Volvos and Fords. The light touch follows through to the most dynamic model, with its magnetically-controlled suspension and muted, supple ride. And it still has more than eight inches of ground clearance, should you get high-centered on some of the last-season stuff stacked on the curb at Saks.

If you expect to give up a lot, other than extra cash, to fit into the Evoque lifestyle, you may want to try one on for size first. There's less room than the LR2, but the Evoque is wider, so overall interior volume isn't intolerable. Up front it's quite comfortable for adults, a little less so in the back seat but not objectionably so, so long as you've bought into the coupe-like premise. What's not easy to swallow is a big adult gut, if you have to clamber into the back seat of three-door Evoques. Meanwhile, the car itself can tote almost a couple dozen cubic feet of luggage, no matter which body you choose.

Land Rover's tackling the brand-stretching Evoque launch with three models and those two body styles. The five-door comes in Pure, Prestige and Dynamic models; the two-door skips Prestige trim. All versions have the standard-issue power features, entertainment features like Bluetooth, USB, and an LCD touchscreen to drive the Meridian audio system as well as phone and optional hard-drive navigation systems. Opt for Pure or Dynamic versions if you want splashy colors with twists of Alexander McQueen; get into a Prestige if your turn-ons include libraries, mahogany paneling, and anything by Laura Bennett. By any means possible, spend up for the panoramic roof, and let it light up the cocoon-like cockpit.

It's toyed with hybrid concepts, but now Land Rover can lay claim to the greening of SUVs, since the Range Rover Evoque's slimmed-down body and downsized drivetrain pay it forward with better gas mileage and, by extension, a happy planet. But the Evoque does something even more historic: it shifts the whole Range Rover brand out of the SUV muck, and pitches it into the future on a savvy, fashion-forward bias.

View the original article here

Nissan testing mobile charging vehicles to quell EV range anxiety

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Mercedes-Benz spreads new V6, V8 engines across range

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Why Yes, a Fully Charged Nissan Leaf Can Go 87 Miles with Range to Spare

“Your mileage may vary” or some variant of this phrase is the most common utterance heard around our long-term Nissan Leaf these days. Inquisitive passersby have had loads of questions regarding the cutesy electric car and, not surprisingly, the most frequent topic concerns range. “How far can it go?” “How far have you driven?” “Have you ever run out of power?” (It would have been more proper to say “energy”).

When the Leaf first arrived, testing director Kim Reynolds and I knew someone would eventually need to do an extended driving run. Someone would start with a fully charged Leaf and put as many miles on it in a single trip as he or she dared. Although it wasn’t explicitly stated, there were some guidelines for the run. First, no battery recharging. Second, drive safely, because nobody wants to see us driving down the freeway at 40 mph. Third, no “perfect scenario” types of driving. No points would be awarded to the individual who drives on a closed-off, low-speed loop for hours on end to wring out the most miles.

That someone turned out to be me. Reynolds had left town – something about driving the long-term Chevy Volt back from Michigan. With a free evening and a juiced battery, it was time to go home. I took a deep breath as I unplugged the MT garage’s Level 2 charger from the nose-mounted receptacle. I snapped the front cover that conceals the recharging ports back into place, knowing it wouldn’t be reopened until I returned in the morning (I hoped). Perhaps I’m being overly dramatic. What was the worst that could happen?

When I switched the Leaf on, I was greeted with a range estimate of 106 miles on the futuristically fancy gauge cluster. Ha, like I actually believed I was going to get that many miles. A week or two ago, I distinctly remember losing 20 miles of indicated range before I had even gone 2 miles. And for the record, I consider myself an easy-going driver. I realize auto journos have a not-entirely-undeserved reputation for generally aggressive driving, but we’re not all like that.

So there I sat in the EV, knowing my round trip would easily breach the 80-mile mark. Up until now, the farthest any staffer had traveled between charges was a little over 58 miles, and my notes indicated there were still around 20 miles left in the battery. If we look at the Leaf’s Monroney, the EPA claims owners should average around 73 miles on a charge. Phooey to that, I said. Steady driving and much mental math, here I come.

I won’t bore you with the excruciating details of finding optimal “throttle” angle and keeping ideal following distances, but the first half of the round trip commute commanded 44.7 miles. After wishing for a traffic-clogged freeway, then getting my wish, I was able to cruise along, covering close to six miles per kilowatt-hour. The going was good until the freeway opened up and my energy economy began to slide. In a rush to preserve my hard-earned ‘mpkW-h,’ I abandoned the freeway as quickly as an exit showed up and took an all-new way back home that luckily never required driving faster than 50 mph. Between L.A.’s great moving parking lot and my insistence on driving at legal speeds, I was home in two hours.

What was I left with after 44.7 miles? I pulled into my garage with the average energy use pegged at 5.2 miles per kW-h and the indicated remaining range at 56 miles. To the immediate left of the high-mounted digital speedometer, I had accrued four “trees” in the Eco Indicator. The trees are intended to represent the amount of tailpipe carbon emissions saved by driving a Leaf. The forest of trees disappears with each shutdown, but every tree is stored over the long term in the standard navigation system. Prior to this trip, the most I had seen in a single drive was very close to three.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any set CO2 standard for the virtual trees. At time of writing, Nissan’s telematics service Carwings reports that 30,269 of these trees have combined to save 130 tons of tailpipe-emitted CO2 here in the U.S. (around 8.59 pounds per tree). Throw in the Leaves from Europe and Japan, and 202,535 trees have saved 407 tons, which equates to 4.02 pounds per tree. Statistical rounding surely doesn’t help these figures, but those are some pretty big gaps. We’ll be sure to follow up on the digital arboretum.

The commute back to the office the next morning was a little shorter because I took my usual route: 42.6 miles. With 56 miles on the dash at start up, I was expecting to be left with 5 miles at the worst, but was pleasantly surprised to finish the job with 13 miles remaining (battery charge level warnings came on with 20 miles left). This time around, just an hour’s worth of driving completed the final 42.6-mile leg. Here are my trip details:

-    Final trip distance: 87.3 miles
-    Indicated range left: 13 miles
-    Average energy use, according to the Leaf: 4.9 miles per kW-h
-    Total energy appropriated for full recharge from 208-volt, 30-ampere supply: 21.45 kW-h
-    Total time needed for full recharge: 6 hours, 4 minutes
-    Total actual driving time: Around 3 hours
-    Driving style: Careful but not hypermiling
-    Transmission drive mode: Normal Drive
-    Climate control use: What’s that?

We’ll be exploring recharging rates and charge times in a future blog, but the 21.45 kW-hrs doesn’t wholly represent chemical energy in the battery.

But now I’m not satisfied with my total miles. Next go-around, I’m shooting for 90 miles. Then 100 miles, maybe…or maybe not. I’m hoping the greater regeneration from driving in Eco will yield an even higher final trip.

Also during my next extended run, I’ll try and let it sit outside for a night and see how the battery performs on the 100-mile trip. Anybody from the bookie trade want to take bets as to whether I’ll make it back then?

View the original article here

Why Yes, a Fully Charged Nissan Leaf Can Go 87 Miles with Range to Spare

“Your mileage may vary” or some variant of this phrase is the most common utterance heard around our long-term Nissan Leaf these days. Inquisitive passersby have had loads of questions regarding the cutesy electric car and, not surprisingly, the most frequent topic concerns range. “How far can it go?” “How far have you driven?” “Have you ever run out of power?” (It would have been more proper to say “energy”).

When the Leaf first arrived, testing director Kim Reynolds and I knew someone would eventually need to do an extended driving run. Someone would start with a fully charged Leaf and put as many miles on it in a single trip as he or she dared. Although it wasn’t explicitly stated, there were some guidelines for the run. First, no battery recharging. Second, drive safely, because nobody wants to see us driving down the freeway at 40 mph. Third, no “perfect scenario” types of driving. No points would be awarded to the individual who drives on a closed-off, low-speed loop for hours on end to wring out the most miles.

That someone turned out to be me. Reynolds had left town – something about driving the long-term Chevy Volt back from Michigan. With a free evening and a juiced battery, it was time to go home. I took a deep breath as I unplugged the MT garage’s Level 2 charger from the nose-mounted receptacle. I snapped the front cover that conceals the recharging ports back into place, knowing it wouldn’t be reopened until I returned in the morning (I hoped). Perhaps I’m being overly dramatic. What was the worst that could happen?

When I switched the Leaf on, I was greeted with a range estimate of 106 miles on the futuristically fancy gauge cluster. Ha, like I actually believed I was going to get that many miles. A week or two ago, I distinctly remember losing 20 miles of indicated range before I had even gone 2 miles. And for the record, I consider myself an easy-going driver. I realize auto journos have a not-entirely-undeserved reputation for generally aggressive driving, but we’re not all like that.

So there I sat in the EV, knowing my round trip would easily breach the 80-mile mark. Up until now, the farthest any staffer had traveled between charges was a little over 58 miles, and my notes indicated there were still around 20 miles left in the battery. If we look at the Leaf’s Monroney, the EPA claims owners should average around 73 miles on a charge. Phooey to that, I said. Steady driving and much mental math, here I come.

I won’t bore you with the excruciating details of finding optimal “throttle” angle and keeping ideal following distances, but the first half of the round trip commute commanded 44.7 miles. After wishing for a traffic-clogged freeway, then getting my wish, I was able to cruise along, covering close to six miles per kilowatt-hour. The going was good until the freeway opened up and my energy economy began to slide. In a rush to preserve my hard-earned ‘mpkW-h,’ I abandoned the freeway as quickly as an exit showed up and took an all-new way back home that luckily never required driving faster than 50 mph. Between L.A.’s great moving parking lot and my insistence on driving at legal speeds, I was home in two hours.

What was I left with after 44.7 miles? I pulled into my garage with the average energy use pegged at 5.2 miles per kW-h and the indicated remaining range at 56 miles. To the immediate left of the high-mounted digital speedometer, I had accrued four “trees” in the Eco Indicator. The trees are intended to represent the amount of tailpipe carbon emissions saved by driving a Leaf. The forest of trees disappears with each shutdown, but every tree is stored over the long term in the standard navigation system. Prior to this trip, the most I had seen in a single drive was very close to three.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any set CO2 standard for the virtual trees. At time of writing, Nissan’s telematics service Carwings reports that 30,269 of these trees have combined to save 130 tons of tailpipe-emitted CO2 here in the U.S. (around 8.59 pounds per tree). Throw in the Leaves from Europe and Japan, and 202,535 trees have saved 407 tons, which equates to 4.02 pounds per tree. Statistical rounding surely doesn’t help these figures, but those are some pretty big gaps. We’ll be sure to follow up on the digital arboretum.

The commute back to the office the next morning was a little shorter because I took my usual route: 42.6 miles. With 56 miles on the dash at start up, I was expecting to be left with 5 miles at the worst, but was pleasantly surprised to finish the job with 13 miles remaining (battery charge level warnings came on with 20 miles left). This time around, just an hour’s worth of driving completed the final 42.6-mile leg. Here are my trip details:

-    Final trip distance: 87.3 miles
-    Indicated range left: 13 miles
-    Average energy use, according to the Leaf: 4.9 miles per kW-h
-    Total energy appropriated for full recharge from 208-volt, 30-ampere supply: 21.45 kW-h
-    Total time needed for full recharge: 6 hours, 4 minutes
-    Total actual driving time: Around 3 hours
-    Driving style: Careful but not hypermiling
-    Transmission drive mode: Normal Drive
-    Climate control use: What’s that?

We’ll be exploring recharging rates and charge times in a future blog, but the 21.45 kW-hrs doesn’t wholly represent chemical energy in the battery.

But now I’m not satisfied with my total miles. Next go-around, I’m shooting for 90 miles. Then 100 miles, maybe…or maybe not. I’m hoping the greater regeneration from driving in Eco will yield an even higher final trip.

Also during my next extended run, I’ll try and let it sit outside for a night and see how the battery performs on the 100-mile trip. Anybody from the bookie trade want to take bets as to whether I’ll make it back then?

View the original article here

First Drive: 2012 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque

The Go-Everywhere Gang Evoques a Sportwagen Land Rover's crystal-ball department reckons the global lux-ute market is going to expand by 35 percent over the next five years, and it wants a big bite of this widening slice of profit pie. How best to get it? Expand the Range Rover brand while shrinking its footprint, both physically and environmentally. This could have been accomplished lickety-split and on the Tata-Nano cheap by pounding the LR2's sheet metal into the shape of the similarly compact LRX concept vehicle, but that's evidently not how the new Indian parent company rolls (praise Vishnu!). No, the LRX is being developed into the Range Rover Evoque the hard way -- by reimagining every detail to perform in a way that befits its bucks-up branding, while remaining faithful to the popular concept car's initial design and packaging. First, the basics: The Evoque will be available in the U.S. as a two- or four-door, with the two-door seating four or five passengers. In place of the LR2's Volvo-designed 230-horsepower, 234-pound-foot I-6 is a Ford-built 2.0-liter turbocharged direct-injected engine good for 237 horses and 251 pound-feet. (It was developed alongside the Explorer's EcoBoost mill.) Power flows to the ground through a six-speed automatic transaxle and a standard Haldex Gen-IV all-wheel-drive system. Other markets will get the option of a 2.2-liter diesel that can be teamed with a manual transmission, auto start/stop technology, and front-wheel drive for max fuel economy. Get a free and easy new car price quote in minutes.

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