The Land Rover Defender will go electrical, however not till in direction of the tip of the last decade as a result of limitations with the current-generation mannequin.
Chatting with UK journal Autocar, JLR (previously Jaguar Land Rover) chief working officer Lennard Hoornik mentioned it’s not doable to show the present Defender into an electrical car (EV), as a result of packaging constraints inside its present platform.
“Electrifying the present ‘L663’ automotive, on its D7x platform, is just not what we wish,” Mr Hoornik advised Autocar.
“The L663 is sensible at what it does and we do have a [four-cylinder] plug-in hybrid (PHEV) model already, nevertheless it’s not simple to seek out the additional house you want inside that chassis for batteries, given the axle packaging and functionality that it wants.
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“We have now mentioned that we are going to make an electrical manufacturing mannequin for every of our new manufacturers [Range Rover, Defender, Discovery and Jaguar] and stay dedicated to that.
“However discovering the house on the present Defender platform is admittedly, actually exhausting, so we might want to use one thing completely different.”
Mr Hoornik didn’t verify whether or not the electrical Defender can be based mostly on a wholly new platform however with its present bodywork, or if a next-generation model of the SUV would launch later this decade with the flexibility to be solely battery-powered.
Whereas JLR is at present testing and can shortly introduce an electrical Vary Rover, that is based mostly on a wholly completely different platform to the Defender, which was one of many final fashions to launch on the D7 structure.
Due to this, JLR insiders advised Autocar it’s unimaginable to suit the bigger straight-six 3.0-litre engines and plug-in hybrid methods from the present Vary Rover and Vary Rover Sport into the Defender, as they’re each on a newer-generation platform.
In October 2023, JLR confirmed it’ll produce EVs throughout the Vary Rover, Defender, Jaguar and Discovery manufacturers as part of its plans to have 9 battery-powered fashions in showrooms by 2030.
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Vary Rover Electrical prototype
To take action, it introduced an funding of €1.3 billion ($2.2bn) into the Nitra, Slovakia manufacturing facility the place the Defender and Discovery are at present constructed. The electrical Vary Rover and Vary Rover Sport – together with Jaguar’s EVs – will probably be produced within the UK.
By 2039, JLR plans to don’t have any internal-combustion engine-powered automobiles in international showrooms. That is 4 years after Europe and the UK will ban new petrol and diesel automobiles from sale.
The Defender is by far JLR’s hottest mannequin in Australia, with 3209 examples delivered to clients domestically final 12 months.
It was additionally the best-selling $80,000-plus giant SUV final 12 months, simply 52 deliveries forward of the BMW X5.
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