Dream Defenders

300bhp/ton said:

Don't really agree. We are all different and all have different needs and wants. You could argue a 72hp Series was capable of running at motorway speeds, towing and going off road and that anything over 100hp would be crazy.... yet in the 1990s Land Rover fitted a 182bhp V8 and a 193bhp Straight 6 to factory Defenders.

Today JLR will even sell you a 385bhp one if you have enough money for it. And people have been plonking larger and more powerful engines in them for almost 40 years. So power is nothing new. The ease of getting that power is much easier these days though.

Also do not forget the Range Rover classic and Discovery 1 are almost identical to a Defender under the body. Just a different wheelbase. But the axles, suspension, drivetrain, steering are all either basically the same design or in many case the exact same components. The Disco2 and p38 RR are also not so far apart in design. And all of these have had much more powerful engines fitted over the past 3 decades or more and have proved to handle the power perfectly well.

You might be happy with 150hp, but I suspect anyone wanting to invest larger sums of money in a new build vehicle today would probably hope for a fair bit more performance.

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Won’t be long before the EV ‘old’ Defenders will be available from JLR Classic Works in the ‘Works Legends’ range……

slomofo said:

Won’t be long before the EV ‘old’ Defenders will be available from JLR Classic Works in the ‘Works Legends’ range……

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Hate to know/guess the price……

lynall said:

Tbh if you are having to constantly tinker to keep a 200tdi going, then I kind of reckon you do not know what you are doing, rest of the car maybe, but not the engine.

That welsh guy on tv doing ev conversions, watched a couple of the shows, was not impressed with the mods, mainly as they used the standard transmission locked into one gear, now I am no genius by a long stroke, but I reckon some old worn out pos trans having to handle the low rpm torque from an ev motor is not going to fare well.

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This is not the approach they are using for the Defender conversion. It is worth checking out some of the Defender specific films they have done. The engine and gearbox are removed and the brakes etc are uprated to handle the increase in torque. To answer an early comment, you also can avoid an IVA if you don't modify the chassis with new holes/fixtures points.

@george man you'll probably see I'm personally 'invested' in the conversion process, whether foul-hardily or just as part of my mid-life crisis. I'm sure you are going to experience some interesting comments around this 'new' approach to a national icon, but people have been modifying Landies in many ways pretty much since their inception --- many do a fare worse job of being true to the brand and IMHO the new version is just yet another SUV.

I honestly think you, ECC and the other convertors are onto a winner, but for me, if you're asking, the top 4 things would be:
1. Reliability & Longevity (you know it'll work when you start it up and it'll be good for another ~200,000miles),
2. Silent running (I don't need/want the noise or smell from the exhaust),
3. The climate positive impact (retrofitting an existing vehicle, reusing materials from donor EV's and low carbon miles),
4. You only live once, so why not have some fun about it.

We'll see how our conversion goes, but I wish you luck and who knows if/when I have any money again, I would be keen to try and convert a Series in the same way myself one day, so I may be in touch.

george man said:

I actually started off looking at something like this. It's hard to put a motor on the diff location because of the constant movement and its also super exposed to rocks etc. The best I could settle on was using hub motors in each wheel on the existing axles but that gives 2 problems: massive unsprung weight and the space between the chassis rails isn't big enough to fit a decent size battery. Hub motors in a 4x4 are also at risk of damage from rocks which isn't an issue in road going cars.

As I say, not to everyone's taste but a new platform gives you the driving experience if a modern car with the looks and preferred driving position of a defender.

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I suggest speaking to the guys at ECC. The Tesla motor is positioned where the transfer box was (deleting the need for the tunnel in the cab), turned 90'degrees to enable full time 4x4 power to both axles. The front engine bay is full of the batteries and some others are positing in the rear loadbay --- this is probably the only drawback, as you could possibly put these where the old fuel tank was, but that would need additional fabrication and certainly be more exposed (although it was good enough for liquid fuel.

tottot said:

The problem is those of us who like Land Rover's [ 90 110 Defender ] as they are are not going to favor what you are trying to do and I recon most here do not like other classics being electrified either.
Not against electric per say but make lighter vehicles that suit the power source.
The problem of tire particle pollution is starting to make headlines and electric battery's are heavy.

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Careful with the weight to pollution argument. Most new vehicles are heavier now and these tend to be SUV's. So while it is true some EV's are heavier than the equivalent ICE version, the ICE >>> EV conversions tend to be done to the pretty much the same weight before and after. That is often the target of the convertor.

george man said:

Our aim is to offer this with a range extender option. There would be a number of different options but for this use case a diesel generator would be best option currently. Gives you the benefit of cheap at home charging but the ease of a quick fill up while out on long drives

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Surely this goes against the electrification. I like the idea of a range extender for longer/off-road adventures (not needed 95% of the time) and think this might be where your USP might be ... but surely not a diesel version and it may not be realistic.

george man said:

Exactly right, the new vehicle wouldn't be registered as a land rover as it wouldn't have enough of the original components. What we would be advertising is converting existing land rovers into the new electric vehicle rather than creating electric defenders.

As I'm sure you know in the UK there is a step between IVA and full blown type approval which allows for up to 250 vehicles to be built a year which is way more than we are aiming at. The test is much closer to an IVA but they look at the production element of it rather than just the vehicle as a single entity

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I may have missed the point of this, and it really sounds more and more like the Munro ... which seems to have raided the Britpart catalogue https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/munro-mk1-ev-defender-rival-be-revealed-next-week

E~FENDER said:

Surely this goes against the electrification. I like the idea of a range extender for longer/off-road adventures (not needed 95% of the time) and think this might be where your USP might be ... but surely not a diesel version and it may not be realistic.

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I'd love to hear more about your conversion, maybe drop me a message!
There are lots of really exciting new technologies on the horizon for power generation but at the moment they are only theoretical or working in small lab tests so range extending options are currently limited to additional batteries or generators.
Most people don't drive more than say 50 miles at a time, those that regularly do 500 mile drives with a trailer aren't going to be looking at evs anyway, but now and then people want to go further, for a holiday or a job that is further away than normal and that's when a range extender comes in handy, for those occasional drives that go over the battery capacity and don't have well placed charging stations.
Thats not to say that down the line this range extender can't be hydrogen or nuclear or a flux capacitor running on banana peel...

george man said:

I'd love to hear more about your conversion, maybe drop me a message!
There are lots of really exciting new technologies on the horizon for power generation but at the moment they are only theoretical or working in small lab tests so range extending options are currently limited to additional batteries or generators.
Most people don't drive more than say 50 miles at a time, those that regularly do 500 mile drives with a trailer aren't going to be looking at evs anyway, but now and then people want to go further, for a holiday or a job that is further away than normal and that's when a range extender comes in handy, for those occasional drives that go over the battery capacity and don't have well placed charging stations.
Thats not to say that down the line this range extender can't be hydrogen or nuclear or a flux capacitor running on banana peel...

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I’ve dropped you a DM. But in passing this may be of interest to you from the US: https://solarrolla.com/product/solarrolla-solar-trailer-mobile-charging-station/