Do you dare to sit in it and drive in the mountain?
Range Rover Sport has recently launched a new product capable of climbing stairs to Heaven instead of passing through every steep hairpin turn and thousands of steps by walking.
The car has been shown in one of China’s most revered national landmarks, Tianmen Mountain in Hunan Province, to tackle the most challenging and twisting highways.
The car is with a British Engine P400e plug-in hybrid, a 4X4 electrical car with five seats. It's also the first SUV in the world that can ascend to the top of the "Heaven's Gate".
Land Rover
Land Rover
Land Rover
There are 99 treacherous hairpins in seven-mile Tianmen Mountain Road from the bottom and 999 steps at the finale to be finished. The final stairs are 45-degree steep.
A same kind of challenge has been finished with Panasonic Jaguar Formula-E using under 23 minutes and Ho-Pin Tung is the test driver of this Range Rover Sport PHEV petrol-electric SUV.
Land Rover
Land Rover
Land Rover
Land Rover
The diver was warned the fear was "crazy" and one Chinese official said, "If he crashes, he will die."
But he finally finished the challenge, saying "I'm still shaking. The adrenalin is something I’ve never experienced before. The mountain very generously gave us one shot to make it up here."
"I've experienced Formula E, Formula 1 and won at the 24 Hours of Le Mans but this was without doubt one of the most demanding driving challenges I’ve ever faced, he added. "The Range Rover Sport PHEV performed brilliantly as it inspired real confidence on the mountain road and climbed the stairs up to Heaven’s Gate effortlessly."
Land Rover
Land Rover
The cost of the vehicle is £70,800. It can run on zero-emission electric power for up to 31 miles and be fully charged from the mains in under three hours.
A spokesman for Land Rover said, "A dizzying 99 turns and 999 daunting steps didn’t stop the new Range Rover Sport PHEV from completing a world-first at one of China’s most famous landmarks."
"This was the hardest Range Rover Sport challenge I’ve ever been involved with because, until we reached the top, we couldn’t categorically say we would succeed," Land Rover Experience expert Phil Jones said. "By making it to the summit, we’ve proven the phenomenal capability of the Range Rover Sport plug-in hybrid like never before – with a genuine world first."
Air traffic controllers in Denver lost communications with planes for 90 seconds earlier this week and had to scramble to use backup frequencies in the latest Federal Aviation Administration equipment failure.
The outage at a control center that directs planes flying at high altitude between airports all over the country on Monday afternoon affected communications, not radar, the FAA's head of air traffic control, Frank McIntosh, said during a House hearing Thursday. This communications failure follows two high-profile outages of radar and communications in the past 2 1/2 weeks at a facility in Philadelphia that directs planes in and out of the Newark, New Jersey, airport.
The FAA said in a statement that the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center lost communications for approximately 90 seconds. McIntosh said both the primary and main backup frequencies went down, so the controllers had to turn to an emergency frequency to communicate.
“Controllers used another frequency to relay instructions to pilots. Aircraft remained safely separated and there were no impacts to operations,” the FAA said.
Rep. Robert Garcia of California told McIntosh during the hearing that these outages are happening more regularly and it’s concerning every time.
“We know that there are staffing and equipment problems at air traffic control,” Garcia said. “We know that the problems have gone back decades in some cases, but it’s still an absolutely shocking system failure and we need immediate solutions.”
Last week, the Trump administration announced a multibillion-dollar plan to overhaul an air traffic control system that relies on antiquated equipment. Air travel is safe even if the air traffic control system is old, but the problems in Newark were unacceptable and could have been prevented if the system had been upgraded sooner, said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in a Thursday op-ed in Newsweek.
The Newark airport has generally led the nation in flight cancellations and delays ever since both radar and communications went out on April 28 and again on May 9. A third similar problem happened Sunday, but that time the backup system worked and kept radar online.
“The safety of the traveling public cannot continue being put at risk,” Democrat and ranking member Rep. Rick Larsen said after the hearing. “Problems with our system have crossed administrations, but safety improvements cannot span generations. We need action now.”
The FAA and airlines that fly out of Newark met again Thursday to discuss cutting flights because there aren’t enough controllers to handle them all. Those conversations will continue for a third day on Friday, but the FAA isn't likely to issue a decision immediately. More than 140 flights have been canceled at Newark Thursday.
Officials developed the plan to upgrade the air traffic control system after a deadly midair collision in January between a passenger jet and an Army helicopter killed 67 people in the skies over Washington, D.C. Several other crashes this year also put pressure on officials to act.
A United Airlines jetliner prepares to push off from a gate at Denver International Airport Wednesday, May 7, 2025, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
