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Jaguar Land Rover has delayed plans for an all-electric version of the Defender, its bestselling model, after placing a two-year pause on a full redesign of the vehicle as part of a cost-cutting shake-up at Britain’s biggest carmaker.
The pause applies to the standard, full-sized Defender. Plans for JLR’s “baby Defender”, a smaller electric version of the vehicle, will still go ahead.
The company has previously said that the “architecture” of the full-sized Land Rover Defender, relaunched in late 2019, means it is too difficult to incorporate an electric vehicle battery. As a result of those restrictions, it said customers would have to wait for the fully redesigned version to be launched.
That generational redesign had been anticipated in 2028-29, although no date had formally been announced. Sources familiar with the situation said it will now be delayed into the 2030s.
JLR said: “Defender is one of JLR’s greatest success stories. With more than 75 years of heritage, purpose and proven capability, it is our class-leading bestseller due to continued strong global demand and enduring brand appeal.”
The move comes with JLR’s new chief executive, PB Balaji, under pressure to cut costs following a tumultuous 18 months for the carmaker, according to industry sources. JLR is owned by the Indian giant Tata Motors.
The company has had to contend with President Trump imposing tariffs on its vehicles. While Sir Keir Starmer negotiated a deal to reduce import taxes on UK-made vehicles to 10 per cent, Balaji is understood to have conceded that even this increase cannot be passed on to American customers.
JLR is understood to have told staff that the two-year pause on the next version of the Defender is down to the current model’s success. The company is selling 110,000 Defenders a year, almost a third of the 350,000 cars it sold in total in its financial year to March 2026.
North America is JLR’s biggest single market, representing 28 per cent of sales. Earlier this month, the company announced it would begin manufacturing the Defender in the United States in conjunction with Vauxhall owner Stellantis, in order to avoid Trump’s tariffs.
American-bound Defenders are currently designed and engineered in the UK, with the engines built in Wolverhampton. But the vehicle’s final assembly line is in Slovakia, meaning it attracts US import tariffs of 15 per cent rather than 10 per cent, on account of being exported from the EU.
The decision to delay the Defender’s full redesign, and therefore push back an all-electric version of the car, comes as the UK consults on watering down electric vehicle sales targets. Initially hatched during the final throes of Sir Keir’s administration, Andy Burnham, the prime minister, has unveiled a consultation on reducing those targets, for the proportion of EVs among all new cars sold, to as low as 50 per cent by 2030, from the current goal of 80 per cent.
The consultation follows the government conceding that demand among UK drivers for EVs is lower than anticipated.
Ministers have insisted that a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in 2030 will remain in force, although there is scepticism within the industry about the feasibility of this commitment, as it may require 50 per cent of all cars sold to be hybrids and the government has yet to define exactly what constitutes a hybrid vehicle.
