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Land Rover bringing diesel hybrid tech to America eventually

Land Rover may have ditched its naturally aspirated 5.0-liter V8 in favor of a 3.0-liter supercharged V6 on the new Ranger Rover due to fuel economy concerns, but don’t think that the British off-road brand is content to sit on its laurels with the V6/V8 strategy.

According to the TheDetroitBureau.com, the Range Rover Hybrid we showed you earlier from Frankfurt will, after all, make the trek across the pond and into the North American market. You can read the particulars about that car by hopping over to its Frankfurt coverage page, but we’ll sum it up right here – 516 pound-feet of torque and 355 system horsepower from a 3.0-liter turbodiesel V6 and an electric motor. Estimates put it at about 37 US miles per gallon, though we’d expect a combined EPA rating a bit below that.

TheDetroitBureau.com quotes Andy Goss, currently Jaguar Land Rover’s US CEO and who is slated to take the company’s top marketing spot, who said, “It’s not a matter of ‘if,’ but ‘when.'” Now, we’ve been clamoring for one of the Range Rover SDV8s sold in Europe for some time. As we won’t be seeing that, this V6 diesel-electric might just be the next best thing. The only problem with Goss’ statement is that it doesn’t really specify when the hybridized SUVs will arrive. TheDetroitBureau.com’s Paul Eisenstein does point out that the pressure is on for Land Rover, though. With federal fuel economy standards tightening up in 2016, the venerable British off-roading brand needs some fuel sippers, and fast.

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