Word coming through from the UK is that Land Rover has been playing with all-electric Land Rover Defenders.
“This project is acting as a rolling laboratory for Land Rover to assess electric vehicles, even in the most arduous all-terrain conditions,” said Antony Harper, Jaguar Land Rover’s head of research. “It gives us a chance to evolve and test some of the technologies that may one day be introduced into future Land Rover models.”
Land Rover has built seven of these all-electric variants, with lithium-ion batteries and Land Rover states that the lithium-ion battery pack gives the Defender a range of just 80 km between recharges, but Land Rover says the car can go up to eight hours between charging if doing low speed off-road driving. That is quite ludicrous, and I have no idea why Land Rover would even bother writing press releases about this. 80 kays! Come on!
Lekky Landy.
Land Rover has ruled out putting the EV Defender into production, but says the seven cars are part of the company’s long-term plans for hybrid and electrification. The new Range Rover will be the first Land Rover hybrid, when the diesel-electric variant of the Vogue goes on sale later this year.
That makes a little more sense, but you will never sell expensive SUV’s that can only go 80 km before running out of volt juice.
