Toyota hybrid drive fails off-road test

One of the virtues of Land Rover's new Range Rover Hybrid is that it remains a serious off-roader.

The potential is there to save fuel and the environment, but first and foremost the diesel/electric Rangie has to be able to plod through muddy, swampy bogholes -- and exit them too, when forward progress may no longer be possible.

And it's that mission-critical design parameter that effectively ended any likelihood of Land Rover embracing Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive system for the Range Rover, says Peter Richings, Hybrids and Electrification Director at Jaguar Land Rover.

"Of course we looked at it, [but] Toyota have got that pretty well covered on patents and that sort of thing," Richings told motoring.com.au in Frankfurt for the motor show.

"One of the disadvantages with that system for a Land Rover is the only way they can drive in reverse is with the electric motor. So it's got very a limited amount of torque; you can't reverse it up a kerb, for instance. And we thought for a Range Rover that would be a bit of a drawback.

"For a Prius it's not an issue; I'm not criticising Toyota's engineering at all, it just wasn't appropriate for our sort of vehicles. That was the main fundamental drawback."

In his electrification role, Richings has been involved in the Evoque_e project, prompting the question: were electric motors considered for the Evoque's rear drivetrain components, rather than the new Active Drive system?

"We've looked at electric rear-axle drives... go back six or seven years and we had a Freelander with an electric rear-axle drive running around as a technology demonstrator, so that's certainly on our list of possibilities.

"I think it's fair to say we haven't discounted anything yet. We really are going to investigate every possibility.

"The disadvantage from a Land Rover perspective is you probably haven't got the full off-road capability applying maximum torque to all four wheels that you can with a conventional four-wheel drive.

"It's more than my job's worth to talk about making a Land Rover less effective off-road than it is today. I can't even start that conversation."

Richings acknowledged that the principal roadblock for 'pure electric' and hybrid vehicles remains battery technology. But the Land Rover exec believes we will see "step change" in that field within the next 10 years.

"It just takes a long time," he acknowledged. "It's very frustrating, because battery technology – if you look at energy density and batteries over the last 200 years – it's just a tiny sort of gradual gradient that's gone up... and honestly, it hasn't changed much in the last few years.

"But there's that many people – really clever people – putting literally billions of dollars worth of research into the area that we're going to see some improvements. I've personally got 35 people working in this area on research programs, [and] we can see stuff that's in research – university chemistry departments... it just takes a long time from having got the sort of basic electro-chemistry to industrialise it and put it into production.

Other companies, including Toyota, have experimented with non-battery methods of storing energy. Would such systems (and particularly super capacitors) yield faster and more affordable results?

"We're looking at all sorts of areas, and super-capacitors is one of them," Richings, "but I think the evidence that we can see is that battery technology is going to improve in the future, and my personal opinion would be that it's probable that in the next 10 years we'll be working with much better technology batteries and electrification that way. But we'll see...

"We're keeping an eye on hydrogen as well [but] I've got some serious doubts about that."

Richings' disquiet is due to the lack of hydrogen replenishment infrastructure available around the world, but ironically we were speaking in Germany, where great strides in establishing that infrastructure are already being made.

"They're putting money into everything really," Richings said of the Germans. "The great thing about electricity is it's everywhere at the moment – and hydrogen infrastructure isn't.

"We're keeping an eye on it; it could happen at some point in the future. I think it's a long way off, personally."

Read the latest news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at carsales' mobile site...

Don't forget to register to comment on this article.