RE: British firm launches 'innovative' EV Defender
Discussion
philrs03 said:
Evanivitch said:
How many miles do you think the average farm/estate/ahoot wagon does? Answer, not a lot. The UK is tiny, a 100 mile range in a "rural" estate is massive.
If instead you're looking for a vehicle for towing to market then you're probably using a Disco anyway.
One estate I shoot on, in Cambridgeshire is 23,000 Acres…. The estate managers and land agents spend from 0700-2000 driving around the estate almost constantly, every day. Anyone with any knowledge at all of how much admin there is in terms of running around when managing an estate will concur. Plus, the nature of the role is unpredictable. There are hundreds of “what if’s” on a farm/estate (monthly), of which a high percentage require an on the spot solution, usually involving a vehicle. You’d have to be clinically insane to mandate your estate staff to drive electric vehicles. Just the time lost in a day faffing about charging the thing would make the whole excersise cost prohibitive! If instead you're looking for a vehicle for towing to market then you're probably using a Disco anyway.
Looks clever but where do the brakes go, or is the motor literally pancake shaped?
The additional unsprung weight must make it drive like a, err, Land Rover.
philrs03 said:
One estate I shoot on, in Cambridgeshire is 23,000 Acres…. The estate managers and land agents spend from 0700-2000 driving around the estate almost constantly, every day. Anyone with any knowledge at all of how much admin there is in terms of running around when managing an estate will concur. Plus, the nature of the role is unpredictable. There are hundreds of “what if’s” on a farm/estate (monthly), of which a high percentage require an on the spot solution, usually involving a vehicle. You’d have to be clinically insane to mandate your estate staff to drive electric vehicles. Just the time lost in a day faffing about charging the thing would make the whole excersise cost prohibitive!
That's less than 40 Sq miles so a tiny bit of land to operate within. And with estate work the vehicles don't tend to drive around all day like an Uber but be sitting idle while the work is being done. The daily mileage is quite low. And the assets aren't being sweated 24 hours like a minicab but generally 12 or less leaving solid and constant recharging windows intra day. Not sure where the 'mandating staff to drive electric' has come from. It's irrelevant as only the equipment which either will benefit from change or can be changed would be changed. These are businesses not silly councils or religious cults that wish to enforce beliefs on all regardless of common sense.
Very clearly EVs offer a great opportunity for things like estate vehicles. I can't wait for fun buses to be electric. Sitting in a cattle truck behind some clapped out, fetid 4 pot Poundland diesel on its last legs is hardly fun when you're paying nearly £2k and unlike 30 years ago the estate is only using the defender today as a pastiche bit of marketing spin that's just old hat, ubiquitous, cliched and boring. It's time to move on and do something intelligent. Gun bus electrification can't come soon enough, it's an absolutely perfect application and a clear cut case where the electric motor is infinitely superior.
Your other estate vehicles tend to fall into two relatively clear types of staff car, on site and off site. If your offsite vehicles need genuine range then switching to EV is daft as diesel is far superior. You're not going to be paying staff to sitting on their arses charging during the working day, any more than you expect them to have their morning crap on company time. The on site equipment isn't likely to rack up much more than 100 miles a day. You don't often find estate based defenders that have even been around the clock yet, they tend to be amongst the lowest mileage survivors unlike the utility company vehicles which have often started their second lap with 5-10 years.
The other advantage land owners have is that they can self generate more easily whether it's land or roof solar or wind. The space is there, the regular demand is there and the capex lending is there.
EVs of all forms are going to make very steady inroads into estate management and business simply because they off things like superior customer experience, superior marketing, superior financing access but in many cases present clear cost savings.
A really good example of the potentially massive savings to be had is with drones which promise to slash diesel spend and labour spend as they can run key tasks fully automated where currently an employee has to turn up and then drive a diesel vehicle whether checking boundaries, checking livestock, checking soils.
Drones in estate management and farming are going to be huge. You will be able to sit down at the breakfast table and a drone will have already gone out and checked all the boundaries, checked all the livestock and delivered its report. No need to send someone out and when work needs to be done they know exactly where to go. Huge labour and fuel cost savings. The drone then soil sample each square metre of a field to ascertain the precise quantity of fertiliser required per sq metre and then the following day applies it. This creates huge labour and fuel savings but also massive fertiliser savings because you're no longer blanket applying based on an estimate per field.
So just by using drones you subsequently reduce the number of estate vehicles needed and how much they're used delivering solid commercial efficiencies. More of those vehicles can then fit within the working parameters of current battery tech.
This has nothing at all to do with some religious nuttery that all must convert to the following or be smited as heathens but about running a business efficiently and intelligently by making use of advantages when offered by new technology.
The downside is that if GenZ then you do not want to be aiming to be a farm labourer as a life long career and any parent in farming would be wise to be guiding and steering their children to be able to work in the new environment where there is going to be more soldering than hammering, more tablets in hands than tablets up arses etc.
But for me going on a good shoot I don't expect in the 21st century to find my cattle trailer being hauled by some stinking racket of a boat anchor. The world really has moved on since the last century and the nostalgic aspect of the knackered, crap, 4 pot pig iron turd under the boner of an old Landie is a total, exhausted pastiche that makes my heart sink when paying for a big day as much as Turkey teeth wedged into the face of the land manager who thinks he is royalty because he gets to sit next to the estate owner at the Christmas lunch. What's fun on a classic small bag day is manifestly not on the larger ones where you just expect an application of intelligence that's funded by oneself and the other guns. The revenue is there to just do things smarter and what is often done out of necessity on modest shoots is an unacceptable, farce of a parody on others and frankly an insult that they think their customers want that. Although given the vast number of untrained new guns they're probably right.
The electrification of land management is going to be really interesting to watch unfold and will offer huge opportunity. Especially to sub 200 acre farms which are dying on the back of labour and fuel inefficiencies and the loss of offspring from the industry.
Giantt said:
It's perfect really. Ideal for short distances and stop start driving and where many roads are unmade tracks with obstacles requiring sensible ground clearance. A perfect go anywhere vehicle for the urban rough and tumble. 
Let's not forget that outside of legacy enforced sales to govt departments almost all defenders sold from the late 80s onwards were for fun and lifestyle use of which urban traversing was really key.
And today as classic cars they're infinitely more suited for city life than any classic sports car. They are brilliant urban and suburban classic cars, it's their genuine natural home in reality.
DonkeyApple said:
That's less than 40 Sq miles so a tiny bit of land to operate within. And with estate work the vehicles don't tend to drive around all day like an Uber but be sitting idle while the work is being done. The daily mileage is quite low. And the assets aren't being sweated 24 hours like a minicab but generally 12 or less leaving solid and constant recharging windows intra day.
Not sure where the 'mandating staff to drive electric' has come from. It's irrelevant as only the equipment which either will benefit from change or can be changed would be changed. These are businesses not silly councils or religious cults that wish to enforce beliefs on all regardless of common sense.
Very clearly EVs offer a great opportunity for things like estate vehicles. I can't wait for fun buses to be electric. Sitting in a cattle truck behind some clapped out, fetid 4 pot Poundland diesel on its last legs is hardly fun when you're paying nearly £2k and unlike 30 years ago the estate is only using the defender today as a pastiche bit of marketing spin that's just old hat, ubiquitous, cliched and boring. It's time to move on and do something intelligent. Gun bus electrification can't come soon enough, it's an absolutely perfect application and a clear cut case where the electric motor is infinitely superior.
Your other estate vehicles tend to fall into two relatively clear types of staff car, on site and off site. If your offsite vehicles need genuine range then switching to EV is daft as diesel is far superior. You're not going to be paying staff to sitting on their arses charging during the working day, any more than you expect them to have their morning crap on company time. The on site equipment isn't likely to rack up much more than 100 miles a day. You don't often find estate based defenders that have even been around the clock yet, they tend to be amongst the lowest mileage survivors unlike the utility company vehicles which have often started their second lap with 5-10 years.
The other advantage land owners have is that they can self generate more easily whether it's land or roof solar or wind. The space is there, the regular demand is there and the capex lending is there.
EVs of all forms are going to make very steady inroads into estate management and business simply because they off things like superior customer experience, superior marketing, superior financing access but in many cases present clear cost savings.
A really good example of the potentially massive savings to be had is with drones which promise to slash diesel spend and labour spend as they can run key tasks fully automated where currently an employee has to turn up and then drive a diesel vehicle whether checking boundaries, checking livestock, checking soils.
Drones in estate management and farming are going to be huge. You will be able to sit down at the breakfast table and a drone will have already gone out and checked all the boundaries, checked all the livestock and delivered its report. No need to send someone out and when work needs to be done they know exactly where to go. Huge labour and fuel cost savings. The drone then soil sample each square metre of a field to ascertain the precise quantity of fertiliser required per sq metre and then the following day applies it. This creates huge labour and fuel savings but also massive fertiliser savings because you're no longer blanket applying based on an estimate per field.
So just by using drones you subsequently reduce the number of estate vehicles needed and how much they're used delivering solid commercial efficiencies. More of those vehicles can then fit within the working parameters of current battery tech.
This has nothing at all to do with some religious nuttery that all must convert to the following or be smited as heathens but about running a business efficiently and intelligently by making use of advantages when offered by new technology.
The downside is that if GenZ then you do not want to be aiming to be a farm labourer as a life long career and any parent in farming would be wise to be guiding and steering their children to be able to work in the new environment where there is going to be more soldering than hammering, more tablets in hands than tablets up arses etc.
But for me going on a good shoot I don't expect in the 21st century to find my cattle trailer being hauled by some stinking racket of a boat anchor. The world really has moved on since the last century and the nostalgic aspect of the knackered, crap, 4 pot pig iron turd under the boner of an old Landie is a total, exhausted pastiche that makes my heart sink when paying for a big day as much as Turkey teeth wedged into the face of the land manager who thinks he is royalty because he gets to sit next to the estate owner at the Christmas lunch. What's fun on a classic small bag day is manifestly not on the larger ones where you just expect an application of intelligence that's funded by oneself and the other guns. The revenue is there to just do things smarter and what is often done out of necessity on modest shoots is an unacceptable, farce of a parody on others and frankly an insult that they think their customers want that. Although given the vast number of untrained new guns they're probably right.
The electrification of land management is going to be really interesting to watch unfold and will offer huge opportunity. Especially to sub 200 acre farms which are dying on the back of labour and fuel inefficiencies and the loss of offspring from the industry.
You know yourself, just because something is 40sq miles that doesn’t mean necessarily short or quick journeys. On that particular estate (my freind was one of the estate managers), there is no “easy” way from one side to the other which was a pretty regular journey for him to make (at least once daily). I’m not an EV nay-sayer but I’m also pragmatic about where and where they would not be useful. Not sure where the 'mandating staff to drive electric' has come from. It's irrelevant as only the equipment which either will benefit from change or can be changed would be changed. These are businesses not silly councils or religious cults that wish to enforce beliefs on all regardless of common sense.
Very clearly EVs offer a great opportunity for things like estate vehicles. I can't wait for fun buses to be electric. Sitting in a cattle truck behind some clapped out, fetid 4 pot Poundland diesel on its last legs is hardly fun when you're paying nearly £2k and unlike 30 years ago the estate is only using the defender today as a pastiche bit of marketing spin that's just old hat, ubiquitous, cliched and boring. It's time to move on and do something intelligent. Gun bus electrification can't come soon enough, it's an absolutely perfect application and a clear cut case where the electric motor is infinitely superior.
Your other estate vehicles tend to fall into two relatively clear types of staff car, on site and off site. If your offsite vehicles need genuine range then switching to EV is daft as diesel is far superior. You're not going to be paying staff to sitting on their arses charging during the working day, any more than you expect them to have their morning crap on company time. The on site equipment isn't likely to rack up much more than 100 miles a day. You don't often find estate based defenders that have even been around the clock yet, they tend to be amongst the lowest mileage survivors unlike the utility company vehicles which have often started their second lap with 5-10 years.
The other advantage land owners have is that they can self generate more easily whether it's land or roof solar or wind. The space is there, the regular demand is there and the capex lending is there.
EVs of all forms are going to make very steady inroads into estate management and business simply because they off things like superior customer experience, superior marketing, superior financing access but in many cases present clear cost savings.
A really good example of the potentially massive savings to be had is with drones which promise to slash diesel spend and labour spend as they can run key tasks fully automated where currently an employee has to turn up and then drive a diesel vehicle whether checking boundaries, checking livestock, checking soils.
Drones in estate management and farming are going to be huge. You will be able to sit down at the breakfast table and a drone will have already gone out and checked all the boundaries, checked all the livestock and delivered its report. No need to send someone out and when work needs to be done they know exactly where to go. Huge labour and fuel cost savings. The drone then soil sample each square metre of a field to ascertain the precise quantity of fertiliser required per sq metre and then the following day applies it. This creates huge labour and fuel savings but also massive fertiliser savings because you're no longer blanket applying based on an estimate per field.
So just by using drones you subsequently reduce the number of estate vehicles needed and how much they're used delivering solid commercial efficiencies. More of those vehicles can then fit within the working parameters of current battery tech.
This has nothing at all to do with some religious nuttery that all must convert to the following or be smited as heathens but about running a business efficiently and intelligently by making use of advantages when offered by new technology.
The downside is that if GenZ then you do not want to be aiming to be a farm labourer as a life long career and any parent in farming would be wise to be guiding and steering their children to be able to work in the new environment where there is going to be more soldering than hammering, more tablets in hands than tablets up arses etc.
But for me going on a good shoot I don't expect in the 21st century to find my cattle trailer being hauled by some stinking racket of a boat anchor. The world really has moved on since the last century and the nostalgic aspect of the knackered, crap, 4 pot pig iron turd under the boner of an old Landie is a total, exhausted pastiche that makes my heart sink when paying for a big day as much as Turkey teeth wedged into the face of the land manager who thinks he is royalty because he gets to sit next to the estate owner at the Christmas lunch. What's fun on a classic small bag day is manifestly not on the larger ones where you just expect an application of intelligence that's funded by oneself and the other guns. The revenue is there to just do things smarter and what is often done out of necessity on modest shoots is an unacceptable, farce of a parody on others and frankly an insult that they think their customers want that. Although given the vast number of untrained new guns they're probably right.
The electrification of land management is going to be really interesting to watch unfold and will offer huge opportunity. Especially to sub 200 acre farms which are dying on the back of labour and fuel inefficiencies and the loss of offspring from the industry.
The UAS piece I’m absolutely in agreement on, situationally depending. Again, they aren’t the silver bullet either. Another stick to have in the golf bag for sure, like an EV car, but not THE go-to stick every time.
I’m not adversed to being towed around in a beaters wagon or a gun bus by an EV, but if you can’t point me to one that could tow an old bailing trailer, or large cattle trailer (as you know, the kind of thing that gets locally produced/re purposed for the job!) then I’m all ears. Even a clapped out 200tdi 90 will drag almost anything, on almost any terrain (that I’ve come across on shoots I’ve been lucky enough to be on) that it’s pointed at. I’d rather be content that I’ll actually get to the drive I’ve paid to shoot on, rather than be faced with a 5km walk-in after the environmentally friendly good ideas club tow car has got stuck, or run out of batteries. Given the dates of the shooting season (predominantly over winter) it’s also not playing to the EV’s currently limited strengths.
Like I say, I’m not against them at all, I’m just against people thinking they are the answer to all problems/use cases. They arnet. Public transport, yes. Motorway munching in comfort on a deliberate journey- yes. But life dictates the situation your in sometimes and that’s where the EV (until charging time and infrastructure catches up) comes unstuck as a concept.
Please (genuinely) don’t take this the wrong way, but your comments have the hallmarks of a graduate, rather than a practical do-er. No offence intended at all, but I can tell from the drone comment there doesn’t seem to be a huge amount of experience in practical employment (outside of potentially project managing) UxV’s in the real world.
That’s my overwhelming takeaway from the EV-Anti EV argument (if you can call it that). Very generally speaking, the EV crowd do seem to come at the argument from a very idealistic viewpoint, as opposed to a balanced, realistic one. It’s interesting.. pragmatism seems to be lost on both sides at the extremes.
Edited by philrs03 on Sunday 21st April 11:26
Edited by philrs03 on Sunday 21st April 11:31
We are arguably in agreement as I hope I've managed to put across that nor do I see EVs remotely as the viable replacement for everything at this moment in time. It'll take decades but some stuff can already switch and be better tools for the job. Buying an EV for estate duties where the range would be an issue would be as dumb as the plonkers who bought Tesla's as urban fashion statements but didn't have any private parking, or those who bought them knowing they needed to do relatively regular long distance stints using a weak early infrastructure and when half the country was doing the same journey. It's all about being sensible and if necessary, just waiting until it's the better tool for the job whether financially or practically.
philrs03 said:
One estate I shoot on, in Cambridgeshire is 23,000 Acres…. The estate managers and land agents spend from 0700-2000 driving around the estate almost constantly, every day.
Proving my point entirely. If they're driving all day there're still not using the range of that electric Defender, u less they've paved the whole place with 60 mph roads? I've frequently driven on 15,000ha, spending "all day" in the seat of a Defender. You simply don't cover as many miles as you think.
Cold said:
An electric motor to power each wheel and all being controlled by a box full of suitable software would make a formidable offroad vehicle.
I see this written a lot and while I can see the potential, the reality doesn't seem to match up. The "traction control" on any of the EV 4x4s I've seen reviewed so far has seemed clumsy at best, the Cybertrucks in particular seems diabolical. The monitoring sensors and software control giving continual instant variation in required torque at each wheel while crossing rough terrain actually seems to be quite challenging to achieve. An old school 4x4 with locked diffs meanwhile can maintain a constant wheel speed with instantaneous 100% torque transfer to individual wheels as required without any processing or monitoring at all. Aside from perhaps some fairly minor manoeuvrability improvements, I can't see how separating out the drive to each wheel inherently improves anything at all in real world capability.
Snow and Rocks said:
I see this written a lot and while I can see the potential, the reality doesn't seem to match up. The "traction control" on any of the EV 4x4s I've seen reviewed so far has seemed clumsy at best, the Cybertrucks in particular seems diabolical. The monitoring sensors and software control giving continual instant variation in required torque at each wheel while crossing rough terrain actually seems to be quite challenging to achieve.
An old school 4x4 with locked diffs meanwhile can maintain a constant wheel speed with instantaneous 100% torque transfer to individual wheels as required without any processing or monitoring at all. Aside from perhaps some fairly minor manoeuvrability improvements, I can't see how separating out the drive to each wheel inherently improves anything at all in real world capability.
The simplest way to retrofit is going to be to place a single motor or a series of stacked axial ones in place of the gearbox and use the engine bay for the bulk of the batteries. In terms of how to make a road car better at being a road car than a current Range Rover as well as better offroad then we'll see how JLR do it with their EV as they'll want to ensure that it is better in both metrics. An old school 4x4 with locked diffs meanwhile can maintain a constant wheel speed with instantaneous 100% torque transfer to individual wheels as required without any processing or monitoring at all. Aside from perhaps some fairly minor manoeuvrability improvements, I can't see how separating out the drive to each wheel inherently improves anything at all in real world capability.
Over time, improved battery energy density will be the biggest assist when it comes to retrofitting systems as stacking all those turds is the real engineering hurdle. To get things like the Defender converted you lose a lot of its utility, which is arguably the bigger gain here by doing away with most of the drivetrain and putting the motors at the wheels which frees up packaging space in the body.
Snow and Rocks said:
I was more replying to the specific point of individual wheel motors somehow inherently outperforming traditional mechanical traction devices off road.
I don't think we've yet seen a production offroad vehicle with a successful implementation of 4xwheelmotors. It will happen eventually and when it does it will most likely be impressive, so I'm not sure the idea can be dismissed simply because present day solutions aren't the full package. Snow and Rocks said:
I was more replying to the specific point of individual wheel motors somehow inherently outperforming traditional mechanical traction devices off road.
They will with the correct control program but I'm not entirely sure the gain would be worth the effort. There would need to be other gains elsewhere such as the battery packaging I mentioned. The planet was pretty much completed track and road wise last century so manual kit from the 1950s remains pretty much as good as anything needs to be and generally simpler to keep working away from a laptop and the internet and JLR have shown that with electronics you can make a car excellent on tarmac, extremely quiet and comfortable and able to be operated by pretty much anyone anywhere all with fandango tyres and double the mass. Crazyzxf said:
Anyone paying attention to IWM, what it can do for us Pistonheads in the future? This is not my car, nor likely I can afford, but I like it.
The short answer is nothing really. IWM isn't generally suited to road car usage because of that unsprung weight issue. Versus other means of powering a car it's just not logical on the grounds of cost (4 motors v 1 & multiple of hours programming for viable road use v almost none). It's a packaging advantage solution where the gain over internal space is greater than the loss of road usability in simple terms. So it's for scenarios where packaging is a monetised aspect such as a van, a bus, anything where the loss of stowage space to drivetrain has revenue implications for the business and where fast road, or even much road use is not a requirement or one that is limited so things like transfer buses, shuttles, site vehicles, robots, commercial facility vehicles etc.
The purpose of this Defender is that people can look at how it has retained not just it's standard stowage space but gained more by the removal of the drivetrain and not just doing an engine swap which typically robs a utility vehicle of its utility. In addition it increases cabin space. And the shifting of mass to the wheels has a lower impact as the vehicle isn't fast road and is, in addition, aimed at normal track and field stuff.
With a conventional electric motor you tend to mount it where one would an engine and then transfer the movement to the wheels using long bits of metal and in the case of retro fits even the gearbox tends to be retained. You can see the packaging issue really well with Defender and Range Rover conversions as these are simple boxes but ones with a larger than average reliance on internal space and stowage. Not only is all the drivetrain retained but the motor sits where the engine was along with some batteries, so taking up the same space and then the remaining batteries take up most of the premium boot space by raising the floor towards the lower visibility line but more crucially introducing a permanent and significant amount of mass significantly higher than the designed the chassis pivot point which is roughly where the rear driveshaft runs and messes up the handling. Just ask anyone who had to drive a military or police Range Rover that was loaded with all the heavy equipment and had the heavy duty suspension what those vehicles drive like!
In short, just swapping the engine for an electric motor and filling the boot with battery boxes is for a more utility orientated vehicle a completely rubbish solution. Massive loss of range and space and therefore usability and a crap drive due to all that new weight above the centre line.
Conversely, with IWM suddenly almost all these issues go away but you're also starting to get clear advantages over ICE thanks to packaging.
You have no mechanicals sitting in the ladder frame. No gearbox, not transfer case, no driveshafts, no exhaust, no fuel tank etc. all that space is now technically usable for some battery storage with protective plating. The engine bay is empty so free to instal batteries down where the sump was and create stowage space above the centre line. The rear stowage space remains unchanged as a battery can fit under the floor where the fuel tank was.
The benefit of IWM is packaging gain v handling loss.
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