Since the end of the Second World War, the Land Rover has been the British Army’s vehicle of choice for the battlefield.
First purchased by Army bosses in 1949, the rugged vehicle’s simplicity, longevity and ease of repair mean it is still an emblem of British forces in the 21st century, used in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Its dominance, however, could soon come under threat – from an electric car.
Special Forces have collaborated on the design of a new vehicle that can run on batteries, hoping it will be able to sneak behind enemy lines without detection because of its reduced noise and thermal masking.
The Fering Pioneer X, designed by former Formula 1 engineers in London, is equipped with four batteries that provide more than 80km (50 miles) of quiet driving.
The vehicle is “not your everyday Prius”, according to Gren Paull, chief operating officer of Fering Technologies. It can be equipped with 12.7mm machine guns, 40mm automatic grenade launchers, and a host of other weaponry.
“This particular car is built in conjunction with Special Forces,” Mr Paull said, as the Pioneer X was unveiled for the first time, at the International Armoured Vehicles Conference in Farnborough this week.
“It is a scalpel. It’s designed to be very sneaky for raiding, sabotage – what Special Forces do.”
He added: “Electricity is an incredible source of propulsion. It’s why submarines were diesel-electric for years. You could argue that electricity was actually what the first cars were. It’s not your everyday Prius. It’s slightly different.”
The car does not rely solely on electricity. It also has a 60kW multi-fuel generator that can extend its range to 7,000km (4,350 miles) non-stop, equivalent to driving from the UK to Abu Dhabi.
Formula 1 engineers
Former Ferrari, Porsche, and McLaren engineers designed the vehicle at Fering’s facility in Battersea, and Mr Paull claimed this racing background gave the car its edge.
“Being race car engineers, everyone wants to win,” he said. “That’s the DNA… Everyone’s history is winning on a track.
“This is a performance car but its environment isn’t the track… it needs to win behind enemy lines. Everything on the car is engineered for purpose. If it doesn’t execute its job, it doesn’t get on the car.”
The vehicle is not currently in service with the Armed Forces – but ministers are planning to use electric vehicles (EVs) in combat.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) will increase testing of battlefield EVs this year at the Army’s Bovington Garrison in Dorset, home of the Tank Museum.
‘Virtue-signalling by MoD’
This is despite warnings from military grandees that relying on EVs could put the Armed Forces at risk.
Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan, said: “What this amounts to is virtue-signalling by MoD, trying to get into the climate change agenda.
“I suspect it will be wasting quite a lot of people’s time and resources in trying to show they are playing their part. At the moment the technology is just not there.
“It is hard enough to keep the current vehicles supplied with fuel, that is a massive operation on its own – I just can’t see how it would possibly work with EVs.
“Fighting battles is an extremely difficult activity – to make it unnecessarily even more difficult seems to be a crazy endeavour.
“I would be pretty confident that it is just not at all a starter in terms of maintaining the level of battleground capability that we have now.”
