The Land Rover Defender will go electric, but not until the end of the decade due to limitations with the current generation model.
In conversation with the British magazine CoachJLR (formerly Jaguar Land Rover) chief operating officer Lennard Hoornik said it is not possible to turn the current Defender into an electric vehicle (EV) due to packaging limitations within the existing platform.
“Electrifying the current ‘L663’ car, on the D7x platform, is not what we want,” said Mr Hoornik. Coach.
“The L663 is brilliant at what it does and we have one [four-cylinder] plug-in hybrid (PHEV) version already, but it’s not easy to find the extra space you need within that chassis for batteries, given the axle packaging and the capabilities it needs.
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“We have said that we will make an electric production model for each of our new brands [Range Rover, Defender, Discovery and Jaguar] and stay true to that.
“But finding space on the current Defender platform is very difficult, so we will have to use something else.”
Mr Hoornik did not confirm whether the electric Defender would be based on an all-new platform but with the existing bodywork, or whether a next-generation version of the SUV would arrive later this decade with the option of running solely on batteries.
Although JLR is currently testing and will soon introduce an electric Range Rover, it is based on a completely different platform to the Defender, one of the last models launched on the D7 architecture.
That’s why JLR insiders told us Coach it’s impossible to fit the larger six-cylinder 3.0-litre engines and plug-in hybrid systems from the current Range Rover and Range Rover Sport into the Defender as they are both on a newer generation platform.
In October 2023, JLR confirmed it will produce electric vehicles for the Range Rover, Defender, Jaguar and Discovery brands as part of its plans to have nine battery-powered models in showrooms by 2030.
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Range Rover Electric prototype
To do this, the company announced an investment of 1.3 billion euros in the factory in Nitra, Slovakia, where the Defender and Discovery are currently built. The electric Range Rover and Range Rover Sport – along with Jaguar’s electric vehicles – will be produced in Great Britain.
By 2039, JLR plans to no longer have combustion engine vehicles in global showrooms. This comes four years after Europe and Britain will ban the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles.
The Defender is by far JLR’s most popular model in Australia, with 3209 units delivered locally to customers last year.
It was also the best-selling large SUV over $80,000 last year, just 52 deliveries ahead of the BMW X5.
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