Jaguar Land Rover has added to its growing portfolio of electrified vehicles by unveiling a new Discovery Sport with MHEV and PHEV power options.
At its Land Rover Experience center in Luton, London, media and guests were shown the redesigned Discovery Sport, a compact premium SUV that now comes with a 48-volt mild hybrid or plug-in hybrid engines to offer more fuel efficiency, and reduce emissions.
The MHEV version works with the four-cylinder Ingenium petrol or engine, while the PHEV variety comes with its three-cylinder engine, which will be available later in the year.
Built on Land Rover’s latest Premium Transverse Architecture (PTA), PTA allows for the introduction of new 48-volt mild hybrid electric vehicle (MHEV) powertrains on Discovery Sport.
First launched on the new Range Rover Evoque, the system uses an engine-mounted belt-integrated starter generator to harvest energy normally lost during deceleration and stores it in an under-floor battery and is fitted as standard on vehicles with automatic transmissions.
At speeds below 17km/h (11mph), the engine will shut off when the driver applies the brakes, before redeploying the stored energy to assist the engine under acceleration to reduce fuel consumption.
The mild hybrid delivers CO2 emissions from as low as 144g/km CO2 (NEDC equivalent) and fuel economy up to 40.9mpg (6.9l/100km) (based on WLTP test procedure). While the PHEV version, when launched, will offer even more efficiency.
The new Discovery Sport is also one of the company’s first models to be Real Driving Emissions Stage 2 (RDE2) certified, which is a stricter emissions standard that is coming into force in 2020.
