Land Rover has been hinting for years at launching a Defender powered purely by batteries, but using the current Defender platform won’t be possible, a senior executive at JLR has revealed.
In an interview with Autocar published on Jan. 21, Lennard Hoornik, JLR’s chief commercial officer, said an electric version of the current Defender has been ruled out due to difficulties in packaging the battery.
JLR is about to launch an electric Range Rover and will follow it up in quick succession with an electric Range Rover Sport. However, these SUVs are built around the more modern MLA platform, which debuted in the latest Range Rover and was designed from the onset to support electric powertrains.
The Defender is based on the older D7 platform, the MLA’s predecessor, which Hoornik said makes battery packaging challenging because of the axle design and the off-road capability requirements. A plug-in hybrid option is available on the Defender in some markets, but the battery here only has a capacity of 19.2 kwh, which Land Rover says delivers less than 30 miles of EV range.
Hoornik, in his interview with Autocar, revealed that JLR is committed to launching a Defender-branded EV at some point, though he didn’t clarify whether this would be a future Defender on a new platform or a separate model like the oft-rumored baby Defender.
JLR has explored alternative solutions, including the possibility of using a hydrogen fuel cell instead of a large battery. However, for now, it seems that an electric version of the current Defender has been ruled out.
