Land Rover Defender P400e 2021 UK first drive

Inside, the PHEV is like other Defenders, in that it’s chunky, with big buttons, and has a mostly sensible layout and a decent infotainment whose reliability is yet to be determined. Retro would be the wrong word for the appealing design but there are cues picked up from earlier Defenders, such as the big slab of dashboard and, while old Defenders did have visible screws, they weren’t on the doors nor heavily featured as in this car.

Even before you hit the road, you’re aware it’s wide. As with the original Defender, there’s a big space between driver and front seat passenger that can be filled with a jump seat but, as was never the case with the old car, there’s still a distance from you to the edge of the doors. There’s a vast amount of room in the rear seats, too, but no third-row option in the boot, because the floor there is a touch higher – only by 30mm – to allow the battery to sit beneath it.

The PHEV gets a marked extra button on the dashboard, 'EV', which swaps between those power modes I mentioned. In electric mode it creeps away from standstill just like an automatic would, shifts imperturbably and, if you put your foot sternly enough on the gas past a kickdown notch, the engine will still cut in. With 139bhp of electric power alone, it’s not sprightly but you’ll keep up with most traffic and it’ll stay all-electric up to 81mph. If you get up there and stay there, it won’t give you your full 27 miles.

If you pop the car into Hybrid mode and start with a fully juiced battery, you can expect around 75 miles of mains-assisted driving before it’s depleted. In town and on country roads, where there’s good scope for regeneration, I saw over 65mpg in this state, which for a car of this size and weight is pretty sound.

Don’t expect similar on a motorway, which is where the Defender’s big frontal area comes into play. Because the hybrid system isn’t doing much regeneration and you’re running on the internal combustion engine for the most part, it won’t do much more than 30mpg.

And once that battery is depleted, well, you’re just in a car where the hybrid is still helping a lot in town and country but the 2.0 petrol engine is dragging around 2.6 tonnes, which is too much for it to achieve much over 30mpg. Which is why your use case defines now, more than ever, which model you buy.

One thing to note: a diesel is likely not as good as this PHEV off road (unless weight is your particular enemy). Not only does the electric motor help fill torque gaps on the road, but drive on electric power alone off road and the motor dishes out torque so comfortably that you can go from no power to just a little power to quite bit of power, in really quick and responsive fashion. And it’s nice to mooch around land silently.

Land Rover’s engineers – and they’re not alone, because I’ve heard Jeep’s say it, too – think an electrified future is exciting for off roading. Power could go to whichever wheel you like whenever you like, and while that isn’t entirely the case for this car, it’s a step along the way.

And it feels like a step worth taking other times, too: the PHEV is, on the road, for much of the time a more agreeable car than a diesel.

In town, as often as not, the engine is off, even with the battery range down; and when it does kick in, it makes a distant thrummily appealing sound from quite a distance away. Meanwhile, not too many cars ride this well (air springs are standard), and certainly not while hanging onto their body movements so capably. With a slowish and extremely accurate steering set-up, it’s much more easy to place than its dimensions would suggest, too.

I still wish it was smaller, but as big cars go, it’s much easier to place than, say, a Volvo XC90. And maybe its size is an inevitability. While our roads are great for chassis development and Land Rover is a British company, other markets want 4x4s that are bigger – so we’ll just have to live with it. But you wouldn’t want it any bigger than this in the UK.