Land Rover to offer its own fully electric SUV: report

Jaguar Land Rover is set to have more cross-brand sharing in motion, as Land Rover has plans for its own version of Jaguar’s all-electric I-Pace SUV, according to Drive. “We will embrace electrification and it is a really important prerequisite for Land Rover. Again Land Rover lends itself to that well,” said Land Rover chief creative officer and head of design Gerry McGovern.

No details regarding timeline or model positioning were revealed; however, McGovern indicated that electrification will find its way into all three pillars of its current range, namely the Defender, Discovery and Range Rover families of models.

“While we work to get to the right scale, we have to make sure we maintain the essence of these brands in the way they look and feel. Electrification is right up the top. It is coming,” McGovern said. There are different approaches available for the taking, the company’s design chief said, particularly in the area of packaging where there are benefits to be gained from the lack of an internal combustion engine.

“Do you want to do a cab-forward design or a one-box, which is good for a minivan but not for me. Do you want to utilise that space for all types of innovative features? Do you put all that extra space inside? That does fundamentally change the volume and proportions of the vehicle, which is crucially important to design. We have to decide what is the right approach for us,” McGovern noted.

One area certain to be beyond compromise is the marque’s legendary off-road capabilities, which could mean that Land Rover’s approach will be more rugged than that of the Jaguar I-Pace and consequently give each of these models their own clearly defined and separate characters, the report said.

“For me, we have to get into electrification. We have to embrace it. We have to do it in a way that maintains the essence of the brand in a relevant way,” McGovern said. The Range Rover and Range Rover Sport P400e plug-in hybrids were launched in October.

GALLERY: 2018 Range Rover P400e

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