While the electric luxury SUV market continues to grow with models from all sorts of different automakers, it seems an electric Land Rover Defender isn’t coming anytime soon. Land Rover’s chief commercial officer Lennard Hoornik told Autocar magazine that it’s simply too difficult to just stuff batteries into the current Defender’s platform, so we’ll have to wait for the next-gen version (or maybe a separate Defender-badged model altogether) before the company’s iconic off-roader goes electric.
The redesigned Land Rover Defender reached American shores in the fateful and hateful year 2020, and despite rumors for years about a potential electric variant, Land Rover seems unable to make it work with the current model. The Defender already features a plug-in hybrid powertrain in other regions, but not in the United States, and it sounds like there’s just no room to fit all of the stuff required of an EV. Land Rover can’t even fit its six-cylinder PHEV in the Defender, having to use a four-cylinder instead. As Hoornik told Autocar,
“Electrifying the current ‘L663’ car, on its D7x platform, is not what we want,” said Hoornik. “The L663 is brilliant at what it does and we do have a [four-cylinder] plug-in hybrid version already, but it’s not easy to find the extra space you need within that chassis for batteries, given the axle packaging and capability that it needs.”
We have said that we will make an electric production model for each of our new brands [Range Rover, Defender, Discovery and Jaguar] and remain committed to that,” continued Hoornik. “But finding the space on the current Defender platform is really, really hard, so we will need to use something different.”
Hoornik wouldn’t confirm whether this meant waiting for a second-generation Defender atop a new platform or instead introducing a second Defender-brand model on a dedicated EV platform before then, but his comments suggest the former scenario is more likely.
“The EV will need to come at quite a significant step in the evolution of the Defender,” he said.
The latest Defender variant to be introduced was the Defender Octa, which has a 626-horsepower twin-turbocharged mild-hybrid V8 and a wild suspension setup. Two Land Rover Defender Octas will compete in the 2026 World Rally-Raid Championship, which includes the legendary Dakar Rally, and Hoornik says his team will learn a lot from simply taking part. Hopefully that means the future EV will have its own high-performance variant.
We’re not likely to see an electric Defender during the lifespan of the current model, and the next-gen model probably won’t arrive until the end of the decade. Until then, if you want an electric off-roader with classic boxy styling, you’ll have to go for the Mercedes-Benz G580, the electric version of the G-wagen — Mercedes’ engineers were able to fit all the EV goodies into the normal G’s ladder frame. But if you really must have a Land Rover, and you really want an EV, don’t fret. The fully electric full-size Range Rover will debut soon and go on sale later this year, and it’ll be followed by other electric Land Rover models this decade.
