Land Rover has built an electric version of its famous defender SUV. The Electric Defender will be unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show next week, but Land Rover released photos and specifications for the electric off-roader ahead of time.
The new SUV comes in the form of a long wheelbase, four-door Defender. Its gas-burning engine is replaced by an electric motor and a 330-volt lithium-ion battery pack. The motor has the equivalent of 94 horsepower and makes 243 lb-feet of torque, reports Left Lane.
Electric cars require heavy batteries, and electric versions of production cars are often much heavier than their mass produced, gas-burning counterparts. But the Land Rover has kept the Electric Defender trim and fit, weighing only 220 pounds more than its diesel counterpart.
The car has very little range, though. The Electric Defender will only take you 50 miles on a charge, which is hardly a range suitable for the historic, go-anywhere vehicle. The batteries will let you drive for up to eight hours on a charge if you’re driving at low speeds off-road.
Of course, Land Rover will not be manufacturing the Electric Defender, and the car we’ll be seeing at the Geneva Motor Show is one of seven prototypes the company will use to test new zero-emissions technologies for future Land Rovers. But even if it's just a testbed, the Electric Defender is still being tested (brutally tested) like any other Land Rover. These tests include driving through 31 inches of water and climbing a 13 percent incline while pulling a 13.4 ton road train.
We’ll surely see more of the electric Rover in Geneva next week, but for now, check out the ominous photos of the electric car entering deep muddy water to ford a river (Can you do that with an electric car? Is that safe?)
