Hybrids accelerate Land Rover's sustainability push

For a maker of Chelsea tractors, Land Rover has expressed some surprising ambitions when it comes to all things green. Of course, the company's vehicles are used in many situations, beyond dropping off little Jocasta at playgroup, many of which actually require a V8-engined four-wheel drive. But UN peacekeepers and dairy farmers aside, Land Rover and Range Rover marques are largely aimed at buyers of luxury motors, albeit with a 45,000-mile carbon offsetting option to salve the conscience.

So having committed publicly to significant emission reductions, both from its vehicles and their manufacture, and backed the commitment with £800m investment, the company has had to demonstrate how it is fulfilling those promises or risk its iconic 4x4s being re-sprayed in an embarrassing shade of green-wash.

In the past 12 months, Land Rover has shown how it has cut emissions from its supply chain. Now it is the turn of the vehicles themselves to curb their carbon footprint.

One of the biggest contributions to reducing emissions from its vehicles is the effort the company is putting into developing hybrid power-trains. Land Rover pinned its corporate colours to the hybrid mast at the Geneva motor show in 2006. Back then it had a department of six working on hybrids. Now, 100 engineers are dedicated to the task of bringing the first Land Rover hybrid to market in 2013.

The new car will use the ZF8 eight-speed transmission (which will also be used later by Land Rover's sister marque, Jaguar) to switch between a diesel- or petrol-fuelled internal combustion engine and a 35kW electric motor delivering 190Nm of torque.

Powering the electric motor will be a 1.7kWh battery that provides at least 20 miles between charges. In the prototype, the battery sits in the spare-wheel bay just aft of the back axle and adds 110kg to the vehicle. However, the battery's weight will be offset by savings elsewhere, say Land Rover engineers.

Plug-in hybrids and "range-extended" models (where an internal combustion engine exists only to charge the battery that supplies the electric motor, not to drive the wheels) will be added some years later.

The time-lag is not due to any engineering hurdles, according Land Rover hybrid technology chief engineer Peter Richings, who insists that developing 4x4s with tailpipe emissions of 70g/km is highly feasible. The problem is how much the technology adds to the cost of building the vehicle.

"What the car-buying public is prepared to pay for hybrid technology is much less than it costs us to put it into vehicles," he says. "Something has to change."