Gamingdeputy reported on April 23 that Jaguar Land Rover’s new pure electric Range Rover will be launched later this year and is currently in the rigorous pre-launch testing phase. Recently, photos of Land Rover’s second mass-produced pure electric vehicle being tested in the Arctic Circle have been released, where temperatures are as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius.
Unusually, the all-electric Range Rover is completely devoid of camouflage, a move Jaguar Land Rover says is to “emphasize the build quality of the initial prototype.” This prototype is completely black and does not have the matte trim that Jaguar Land Rover has previously hinted at (to distinguish pure electric models). The overall appearance is almost the same as the fuel version of the Range Rover that will be launched in 2022.
Advertisement
Jaguar Land Rover says the new images show the prototype's “modern design language true to Range Rover's pedigree”, hinting that the upcoming Range Rover Electric (officially named) will remain the same with straight-six, V8 and plug-in hybrid versions. There is a great degree of similarity. This approach is similar to the pure electric G-Class that Mercedes-Benz will release at the Beijing Auto Show this week. The appearance of the latter is also expected to be highly consistent with the fuel version.
Advertisement
Currently, testing of the Range Rover Electric is focused on how its gearbox, electric motors and electronics perform under extreme conditions. Jaguar Land Rover emphasizes that this is the first vehicle to use batteries and electric drive units (EDU) assembled by the company in-house.
The company also revealed that the new car does not use a traditional ABS-based traction control system, but uses new software to precisely control the slip of each wheel, which is said to reduce “the torque reaction time of each wheel from approximately 100 milliseconds to 1 millisecond”. The result is “maximized traction on all surfaces, excellent response and refined handling, significantly enhancing the Range Rover driving experience”.
Gamingdeputy noticed that the official has not yet announced specific technical details or performance data, but it has been previously confirmed that the car will use an 800V charging architecture. Jaguar Land Rover opened interest registrations for the first batch of Range Rover electric versions in December last year, and by February this year, the company said it had received more than 16,000 expressions of interest.
Although officials have not announced the performance details of the new car, they promise that it will have the same “all-terrain” capabilities as the fuel version, and that its towing, wading and off-road capabilities will exceed those of any other luxury electric SUV, including the ability to wade through 850 mm deep waters. . It's suggested that the electric Range Rover's performance will be comparable to that of the existing V8-powered version, suggesting that its total output could be close to that model's 523bhp.
The car is expected to use a dual-motor system to bring stronger four-wheel drive capabilities, and systems such as torque vectoring will also improve its off-road performance. Jaguar Land Rover said its test program has been specially adapted to specifically examine the vehicle's floor, battery durability and cooling performance.
The Range Rover Electric will be built at the Solihull plant alongside the existing mild hybrid and plug-in hybrid versions. Batteries from third-party suppliers will initially be used, before gradually switching to battery packs produced at a new gigafactory planned by Jaguar Land Rover parent company Tata Group in Somerset.
Interestingly, Jaguar Land Rover project director Nick Miller previously stated that the MLA architecture can also easily accommodate a hydrogen power system, which means that a hydrogen fuel cell-powered Range Rover may be launched in the future. However, Jaguar Land Rover did not disclose the latest progress of its hydrogen power development project “Project Zeus”. Jaguar Land Rover has previously tested a hydrogen-powered Defender prototype and said hydrogen would be used as a “complementary technology” across its entire range of vehicles to achieve its goal of zero tailpipe emissions by 2036.