Land Rover has come up with Silk Trail, which is a 16,000 km endurance expedition of the new Range Rover Hybrid. In order to demonstrate the capability of the Range Rover Hybrid to the world, the Silk Trail has been organised starting from August 22nd in Solihull, UK (home of Land Rover). The Silk Trail will travel for more than seven weeks through Europe, Russia and Asia to Mumbai, India on October 15th (home of Land Rover’s parent company, Tata Motors). The Silk Trail consists of three Range Rover Hybrid models which have covered 3034 kms until now.
The Silk Trail expedition consists of 10 stages, which includes a visit to France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Nepal and India. The Silk Trail is a historical network of interlinking trade routes which connect East, South and Western Asia with the Mediterranean and European world. The Range Rover Hybrids are being driven by teams of Land Rover development engineers. The hybrids will face some of the world’s most challenging roads, passes and trails. The British carmaker claims that the Range Rover Hybrid is the world’s most capable hybrid.
The Range Rover Hybrid and Range Rover Sport Hybrid are based on the 3.0-litre V6 diesel engine coupled with an electric motor. The combined performance of the 3.0-litre diesel and the electric motor comes up to 335 HP of power with 700 Nm of torque, mated to an 8-speed ZF automatic transmission. Land Rover has managed to achieve improved performance with high fuel economy over the standard Range Rover. Fuel efficiency stands at 15.62 km/l and 26 percent lower CO2 emissions of 169 g/km. Both the hybrids will go on sale across the UK on September 10th and deliveries will commence in early 2014.
