Land Rover Range Rover Evoque (2023 - ) review

No Evoque is especially cheap to buy, and all are beyond the £40,000 threshold beyond which you pay the ‘premium car’ road tax/VED rate for the first five years of ownership. You at least get a reprieve in the first year on the P300e plug-in hybrid (PHEV for short) we drove, saving as much as £1,555 upfront over the ‘mild’ hybrid petrols and diesels. The PHEV will also score savings in Benefit In Kind for company drivers because of its low CO2 figure, though the overall real-world fuel consumption we experienced suggests private buyers may not see a return on the extra purchase cost. If you can be bothered to plug it in and charge the battery you may, as we did, see over 100mpg for the first 40 miles or so of your journey. But go any further and that soon plummets to the same as (or worse than) the non-PHEV models, and on an 80-mile round trip ours was showing less than 30mpg by the time we got home. Which isn’t great. Basically, given the costs and faff of charging it’s hard to see any financial benefit in running the plug-in version, unless you score those company car tax breaks.

Recently restructured into what’s called a ‘house of brands’, Jaguar Land Rover products have long battled an anecdotally poor reliability record among owners, with electronic glitches a common complaint. You’d have to hope the worst of those have been ironed out with this updated version of the Evoque, and the fact the operating system powering the infotainment can be updated over the air can hopefully see any issues you do encounter sorted without having to visit a dealership.

The Evoque has the usual required safety aids like automatic braking if you don’t respond to a hazard in front of you and lane keeping tweaks to the steering if you’re edging towards the white lines but, in keeping with JLR’s driver-focused mindset, these are less intrusive than we’ve experienced in other cars. Which we appreciate. Zero-tolerance speed warnings are another legal requirement these days and the Evoque also bongs any time the limit changes as well, meaning there are sometimes so many alerts you can lose track of what you’re being warned about. Which rather defeats the object. Thankfully, Range Rover lets you configure a ‘custom’ alert level where you can adjust the sensitivity of all these systems or turn them off completely, all with a single push of a button on the steering wheel. On trim levels that don’t have the systems as standard you can also add a reasonably priced Driver Assist Pack with useful features like blind spot alerts and warnings if you’re backing out into the path of unseen traffic. All of which is definitely worth having, given how poor the visibility is with hazards like fences, bollards, other cars and even small children obscured beneath the raised ‘beltline’ of chunky bodywork.

See ‘Features’ for thoughts on functionality but, in terms of style, the interior of this refreshed Evoque is up there with the best in class, Volvo XC40 included. In fact, we’d argue it feels that bit better quality than the Volvo, though we might have been spoiled by the fact our test car was a top of the range model with all the trimmings. It’s more spacious in the back than the first generation as well, with enough leg- and headroom to cut it as a family car, even if you’ll weep at the idea of kids doing their worst on all those fancy fabrics and fittings. On the road the Evoque has always driven better than most of its type as well but we’d argue JLR has perhaps turned the dial a little too far towards the sporty end of the spectrum, given the car’s intended use. Ride quality is usually a Range Rover selling point but for whatever reason (we’d blame the extra weight of the hybrid system, and the big wheels of our Autobiography spec test car) the Evoque we drove felt unusually nervous and harsh over the bumps, the sensitive steering adding to the unexpected edginess. Relaxing it is not, which is a shame because the premium vibe and refinement otherwise make it a nice place to be. Worth noting that the adjustable suspension system available on other Evoques is, for some reason, not available on the plug-in hybrid – we’ll report back on whether this improves matters once we drive one.

The biggest changes for this refreshed Evoque are inside, and the replacement of the previous ‘letterbox’ screen with a much bigger one standing proud of the dash. This replaces the previous arrangement, ditching the neatly multi-purposed rotary controls for heating and ventilation and putting everything through the screen. This doesn’t feel like progress, given you now have to take your eyes off the road to adjust the interior temperature, fan or other comfort features and the ‘floating’ screen rather overwhelms what was previously a very stylishly integrated look. The operating system powering it is much upgraded, though, with slick graphics, a logical menu system of swipeable tiles and tabs and increased functionality like built-in Alexa voice control. You can, of course, wirelessly link (and charge) your phone via CarPlay or Android Auto, but the connection was a little flaky with our Apple device and it wasn’t always obvious how you switch between phone apps and the car’s menus. Which is more critical than ever given you now have to do everything through the latter. Maybe you get used to it with time but the likes of BMW and Mercedes are slicker in the way they merge third party phone apps and those built into the car’s system. In terms of trim levels and equipment the lowest one is probably more about an attractive looking price to hook you into the configurator, the good stuff only really coming as you progress to Dynamic SE with its standard blind spot warnings, leather trimmings on the seats, power tailgate and digital instruments. Things get fancier the more you spend and a top-level Autobiography feels properly fancy, though it’s diminishing returns by that point in terms of ‘get what you pay for’ value

The Evoque uses various versions of Range Rover’s small engine family, with all but the most basic model getting all-wheel drive with various electronic systems to keep you moving in all conditions and what’s known as a ‘mild’ hybrid boost that can cut the engine when slowing down for improved efficiency. The naming conventions are pretty easy to understand when comparing cars on the pricelist, ‘P’ standing for petrol and ‘D’ for diesel, the number that follows more or less equating to the output in horsepower. We drove the P300e, which goes further on electrification and is a full plug-in hybrid capable of nearly 40 miles without firing up the petrol engine, the combined 300 horsepower when both are working together making this the most powerful Evoque in the range. It’s a mixed bag, though. With the battery charged the electric motor offsets the extra weight and contributes to smooth, relaxing progress. Ask more, though, and the petrol engine makes a bit of a din, its modest 1.5-litre capacity struggling against the Evoque’s weight. We haven’t driven any of the others yet but previous experience suggests the regular engines may be a better match for the car, and if it were our money we’d be looking at a P200 petrol over the plug-in.