Range Rover Hybrid on the Silk Trail

A trio of Range Rover Hybrid s (pictured) on the Silk Trail

The new Range Rover Hybrid (and the Range Rover Sport Hybrid too) are heading for a reveal at the Frankfurt Motor Show in a week or so, but they’re not quite ready for showrooms yet. Land Rover are still busy doing the final shakedown of the hybrid powerplant and have decided the best way is a high profile jaunt from Land Rover in Solihull to Mumbai in India following the ancient Silk Trail route to test the robustness of their new hybrid.

So they garnered a trio of Range Rover hybrids – and support vehicles – enlisted a team consisting of Land Rover development engineers and motoring media from 10 countries, and set off from Solihull on 22nd August on the almost 10,000 mile expedition.

So far, the hybrids have done the bit to Berlin – not the toughest challenge – but have now set off on the second leg of their journey – which will cross Europe, Russia and Asia before heading for Mumbai (that’s Bombay for older readers) – arriving on October 15th after a 7 week trip.

Having left Berlin, the expedition is now on stage two, a 1,094 mile trip Cracow and Odessa (which should be a bit tougher on the Range Rovers) before the real hard work starts.

John Edwards, Land Rover’s Global Brand Director, said:

A stunning combination of mountain passes, arid desert, high altitude, chaotic city streets, heat, humidity and wilderness will provide the perfect testing ground for our first hybrid.  Our engineers are using this adventure as the final development drive before the official sign-off for series production later this year.

So there’s a fair chance that if you shell out getting on for £100k for a big spec Range Rover Hybrid that it will be able to do the school run, the beach trip, the boot sale car park and that nice country restaurant up a dirt track without too much trouble.

Proper public service testing from Land Rover.

By Cars UK