Plug-in hybrid Defender would not have pleased the Camel Man

Anybody that lived in the 1980s must remember the Camel Man.

His name was Bob Beck by the way and I only know this because I googled it. He was this weathered, tough-looking guy with a real mop of curly hair. He had a proper moustache and plenty chest hair on display. And he would light a Camel cigarette while leaning on his old Land Rover Defender in remote places deep in the heart of Africa.

Smoking was cool back then. So was driving a square-shaped bucket of bolts held together by oil leaks that could go literally anywhere. It was a lifestyle choice.

Fast forward to 2025. Beck is no longer with us. He died from cancer, but nowhere does it state that it was a result of smoking. Either way, smoking is very un-PC in the modern world, unless you are Snoop Dogg. Bodies get waxed and manscaped these days, and a Land Rover Defender comes with a five-year/100 000km full maintenance plan. This means you don’t have to get your hands dirty and driving a R2.3-million square shaped bucket of very high-tech bolts held together by oil leaks that your maintenance plan takes care of is still cool. It is still very much a lifestyle choice.

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Putting PHEV to the test

There is absolutely no dispute that the Land Rover Defender is an iconic vehicle that has long been synonymous with ruggedness and off-road prowess. In the case of the Defender 110 P400e X-Dynamic HSE plug-in hybrid (PHEV) that The Citizen Motoring recently had on test, the Defender brings its legendary off-road capability into the future with the integration of hybrid technology. And this is what I want to talk about today because we have already covered all the luxury details.

The real story of the Defender 110 P400e PHEV begins under the bonnet. Land Rover has equipped this model with a 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine paired with an electric motor and eight-speed gearbox, which works on paper and in the real world. Well sort of. While the hybrid setup produces a combined 297kW of power and 640Nm of torque, and this offers a serious level of performance as you can see from the road test stats, it’s the claimed fuel consumption and efficiency that spoils the party a bit.

No slouch on the tarmac

We all know it’s a bit heavy at 2.5 tons, but it has all this power and torque to push it along. A 0-100km/h time of 6.2 seconds is not slow, nor is a 190km/h speed in just 800m of tar. But you would think that is thanks to its hybrid system and battery assistance that is said to offer you up to 51km of pure electric only. And with a claimed average fuel consumption of 2.8-litres per 10 km, you should have no complaints. But like said, there is a problem at this party, and it’s range, or the lack there of.

Firstly, when I fully charged our Defender, it showed a maximum range of only 35km. Now unless you live within this radius, once that electricity is gone, you only have a 2.0-litre mill doing the hard work. And that took our average fuel consumption out to 11.8 litres per 100km. And that is not that great.

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I really enjoyed my time with the Land Rover Defender 110 P400e X-Dynamic HSE. It successfully combines the brand’s legendary (but untested by me) off-road capabilities with modern hybrid technology. It features all the luxury and technology that one would expect from a high-end SUV, but the similarly-priced D350 X turbodiesel just makes so much more sense if you are Defender shopping.

Land Rover Defender test results