WHO NEEDS A TORQUE CONVERTER?
As is becoming common among longways-engined plug-in hybrids (PHEVS), the Range Rover Sport P400e squeezes its 114bhp electric drive motor into the space in the drivetrain where the automatic transmission’s torque converter would otherwise be. When packaged with the clutches that it needs to disconnect and reconnect at will, the motor is about an inch longer than the torque converter was – so the P400e’s 2.0-litre petrol engine is packaged about an inch further forward under the bonnet than it would be in a Range Rover Sport 2.0 Si4.
Land Rover says its hybrid transmission is sufficiently ‘modular’ to work in tandem with any of its engines, although the costs of engineering each new combination of piston engine to work with it make it unlikely that we’ll see a whole family of Land Rover PHEV models – at least for the time being.