Land Rover SA has gone green in more ways than one with this concept – a battery-powered game viewer, combining the Defender’s proven off-road ability with an innovative all-electric drive system – thus making it a truly “green” vehicle with zero exhaust emissions.
This all-South African project has been developed by local Land Rover specialist Barker Performance Products, with technical support from Land Rover’s development specialists, and it’s making its official debut – appropriately – at Indaba 2011, one of Africa’s largest tourism events, on in Durban from May 7-10.
Kevin Flynn, managing director of Jaguar Land Rover for Sub-Saharan Africa, explained: “The all-electric game viewer concept has zero tailpipe emissions, thus offering a clean and silent operation, and reduces the impact on the highly sensitive environment in which these vehicles operate.”
The battery-powered Defender concept came about in response to a request from Londolozi, one of South Africa’s top game parks, for an ecologically-sensitive vehicle with dependable off-road abilities.
Axeon, Europe’s leading independent manufacturer of battery systems, came up with the ‘Lectric Landy’s innovative 300V, 27 kW-hour, air-cooled lithium-ion battery pack.
That drives a 59kW, air-cooled AC induction motor with a regenerative capacity of 10 kW and 330Nm of instantaneous torque complementing the Defender’s permanent four-wheel drive system with differential lock – and the whole system has been shoe-horned into the standard engine bay so as not to compromise the Defender’s ground clearance, wading depth and extended seating capacity.
