The Ineos Fusilier Is A Smaller Grenadier With Electric Power

The Ineos Grenadier has been around for just over a year now, doing a seemingly decent job of carrying on the spirit of the Land Rover Defender by being a properly rugged, capable, function-over-form 4x4 that’s slightly rubbish on the road. As you’ll know if you’ve seen one in person, it’s a big old hector - nearly five metres long and over two metres wide.

Now, Ineos has revealed its second standalone model, the Fusilier. Slightly smaller than the Grenadier and its Quartermaster pickup derivative, it’s being pitched to a different customer base, with electric power at the forefront.

The Fusilier was unveiled today by company boss and one of Britain’s richest men (and part owner of Manchester United and the Mercedes F1 team), Sir Jim Ratcliffe, at an event at the Grenadier pub in London that gives its name to the new car’s bigger sibling.

Details are fairly scarce for now, but visually, there’s nothing hugely surprising. It has a very similar design language to the Grenadier, i.e., like somebody’s asked an AI to draw a picture of an old Defender. There’s definitely a bit of old-school Mercedes G-Wagen in its shorter, squatter stance too, which is far from a bad thing.

It’s hard to get too much of a handle on size. Ineos says it’s “slightly smaller” than a Grenadier but based on the images of Ratcliffe standing in front of it, we’re inclined to call it “quite a lot smaller.” It’s definitely not Suzuki Jimny levels of dinky, but it doesn’t look like it’ll be too much bigger than the average mid-size family crossover. Then again, Ratcliffe’s a fairly tall chap so there might be a bit of an optical illusion going on.

While the Grenadier uses BMW-sourced petrol and diesel straight-sixes, the Fusilier will be powered exclusively by zero- or low-emission powertrains. Details are unconfirmed, but it’ll be offered as both a full battery-electric vehicle and as a range-extender hybrid with an unspecified “small petrol engine” to charge the battery on the go.

It’s all based on a newly-developed skateboard platform with what Ineos delightfully calls a “steel top hat”, with the doors and some other fixtures made from aluminium. We can expect full powertrain details, along with a launch window and presumably pricing, later this year.

Unlike the Grenadier, which is produced in the former Smart factory in France, the Fusilier will be built by Magna-Steyr in Austria. That’s a firm with a long history of producing both capable 4x4 vehicles of its own design and building more niche models under contract from major manufacturers (in recent years it’s assembled the Aston Martin Rapide, Mini Paceman and the chassis and body of the Mercedes SLS).

To ensure it still has the off-road chops of its bigger stablemate, the Fusilier will undergo a testing programme on the Shöckl mountain near Magna-Steyr’s plant in Graz, Austria. With the possible exception of Rivian’s range, the worlds of EVs and off-road capable 4x4s haven’t really collided yet - could the Fusilier be the car to change that?