Jaguar Land Rover is working under the name ‘Project Zeus’ on a Defender with a fuel cell. The British company wants to investigate the possibilities of hydrogen in an off-roader like the Defender.
Should the Land Rover Defender have a very strong diesel engine, be a plug-in hybrid or be equipped with a thick V8? The choice is huge. One important choice is still missing: electric drive. That may change, although it remains to be seen whether the Defender will receive a plug in that case. Jaguar Land Rover is investigating a fuel cell in the Defender, which, thanks to hydrogen, can provide all four wheels with electrical power.
The British take the Defender to experiment with this technique and state that for Land Rover it is ‘one of the options on the way to zero emissions from the exhausts by 2036’. No emission of gases, in that case, because water will still come out. Sister brand Jaguar will switch completely to electric drive by 2025, there is not yet such a concrete goal for Land Rover. By 2030, at least a fully electric version of each model must be available. JLR expects that 60 percent of Land Rovers will be fully electric by that year. The expectation is that the new Range Rover will be the first purely electric Land Rover, but the Defender with fuel cell may be there even earlier. Land Rover will start testing a prototype this year.