2023 Range Rover Velar Unveiled With Mild Refreshments All Around

The Land Rover marque continues its efforts at reinventing its line-up, with the marque presenting a refreshed Range Rover Velar for its 2023 model year guise this week. The mid-life facelift sees Land Rover’s Porsche Macan rival now sporting tweaked styling, upgraded tech, as well as a performance boost.

Starting with the exterior, the refresh sees the Velar sporting new LED light designs, a new front grille, as well as a reshaped rear bumper. Other changes are minimal beyond the highlighted tweaks, thus keeping the Velar looking rather familiar.

The most noticeable change lies inside the cabin whereby the Velar adopts a new cockpit arrangement that mirrors what’s seen in the larger Range Rover and Range Rover Sport. Key to this is a new 11.4-inch ‘floating’ touchscreen infotainment unit powered by JLR’s latest Pivi Pro system.

According to Land Rover, up to 80% of all tasks can now be carried out within two taps of the screen. Much of this stems from the 2023 iteration of the Pivi Pro system making both the climate and audio controls permanently visible, a new ‘pre-drive’ panel for commonly used features, as well as Amazon Alexa voice control functionality.

Notably, a minimalistic new centre console lies underneath the new touchscreen, which keeps the cabin free of physical controls. There’s also a hidden storage cubby beneath this plus wireless smartphone charging pad.

Since it first debuted back in 2017, the Velar last received a major mechanical update just three years down the line where a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) powertrain option was added. The headline for this latest 2023 refresh is a substantial upgrade for the Velar P400e PHEV variant.

Said PHEV benefits with a larger new 19.2kWh battery unit replacing the outgoing 13.6kWh unit. It now grants up to 40 miles (approx. 64 KM) of full electric travel as opposed to 33 miles (approx. 53 KM) prior. Additionally, the PHEV system can now accept faster charging of up to 50 kW, thus making this one of the fastest-charging PHEVs on sale.

Beyond that, the P400e variant continues to pair its 2.0-litre 4-cyl petrol mill with an electric motor integrated in its transmission, granting combined outputs of roughly 398 HP and 640 NM of twist, thus allowing 0-100 KM/H in just 5.4 seconds plus a V-max of 209 KM/H (130 MPH).

The same petrol mill powers the Velar P250 variant slotted below the PHEV variant, whereas mild-hybrid powertrains are now adopted for three other engine options available. The latter employs a 2.0-litre 4-cyl turbo-diesel mill with roughly 202 HP plus two in-line 6-cyl petrol and diesel options  that serve up 395 HP and 296 HP respectively.

Now before you ask, the refreshed Velar will not feature a 5.0-litre V8 option. This setup was last seen in the SVAutobiography variant, which was a limited-run special offered prior.

In the UK, the refreshed 2023 Range Rover Velar sees its price range from £54,045 (approx. RM283,017) for the base D200 S variant and a ceiling of £79,825 (approx. RM418,019) for the range-topping P400 Autobiography. The electrified Velar P400e, on the other hand, commands a starting figure of £64,745 (approx. RM 339,050) instead. Deliveries are slated to commence in the coming weeks.

With these facelift, the Velar is poised to make the Solihull-based brand’s Macan rival stand as a much more integral part of its line-up. It also ought to remedy its slow-moving sales – it was the brand’s second slowest-selling model in 2022 with just 27,668 units shifted, or 9,000 less than the Land Rover Discovery Sport model.