JLR planning 800-Volt platform for future electric vehicles
After Jaguar Land Rover recently presented its ‘Reimagine’ strategy, new details about Land Rover’s electrification plans have surfaced. This time, the company also envisions a date for full electrification set against a new 800-Volt platform.
JLR CEO Thierry Bolloré in the ‘Reimagine’ strategy had already imagined the Jaguar brand to become all-electric from 2025. Land Rover was to launch six all-electric models in the next five years. So far, there has not been a fixed date from which Land Rover will offer its SUVs and off-road vehicles only in purely electric form.
As the British portal Autocar now reports with reference to an investor presentation, this date has now been set: 2036. From then on, Land Rover will only produce electric vehicles worldwide. Until now, they had operated along with the interim target of 60 per cent of global sales being achieved with purely electric vehicles from 2030. The investor presentation reveals that of the remaining 40 per cent, only a quarter (i.e. ten per cent of total sales) was to be accounted for by plug-in hybrids; the British company wants to achieve the rest (i.e. 30 per cent of total sales) with mild and full hybrids.
In this process, all future Land Rover models are to be converted to one of two new platforms: The Modular Longitudinal Architecture (MLA) and the Electrified Modular Architecture (EMA). In the latter, Land Rover will rely on 800-volt technology. JLR aims at a fuel consumption of 13.8 to 15.5 kWh/100 km (in the original: 4-4.5 miles per kWh). Besides, the motors are the “most torque-tight” in the class – i.e. have a particularly high torque in relation to their size.
The EMA architecture, which is to be used from 2024, is designed for fully electric cars but can also be used for plug-in hybrids and full hybrids and will first be used in the next generation of the Range Rover Evoque and Land Rover Discovery Sport. In other words, there will be no more pure internal combustion engines or mild hybrids on these two models.
The Modular Longitudinal Architecture (MLA), scheduled for introduction in 2022 or 2023, is suitable for the mild-hybrid, full-hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and all-electric powertrains for models such as the next-generation Range Rover and Range Rover Sport.
The report also voices speculation about the Velar’s future: this model is positioned in the Range Rover family between the small Evoque and the larger Range Rover Sport. The presentation did not specify which of the two platforms the Velar would be based on in the future. Therefore, the magazine speculates that the EMA-based Velar could be offered only as an electric car “to provide greater differentiation from the Evoque”. None of this information has been confirmed by JLR.
Currently, the British only have one BEV on offer with the Jaguar I-Pace, but the in-house development is not based on any scalable platform. There are two different plug-in hybrids for the current models: with the sales designation P300e, a three-cylinder petrol engine is combined with an electric motor in the smaller models (including Range Rover Evoque, Land Rover Discovery Sport and Jaguar E-Pace), while in the larger P400e (including Land Rover Defender, Range Rover Velar, Jaguar F-Pace) the combustion engine is a two-litre four-cylinder. These vehicles can also be charged with direct current.
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