Big changes coming to amp sales of Audi Q7, BMW X5, Mercedes-Benz GLE rival: All-new 2026 Range Rover Velar to go fully electric with fresh underpinnings

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is reportedly working on an electric version of its mid-sized luxury SUV, the Range Rover Velar.

Poised to arrive in the UK within the next 18 months, British car publication Autocar has procured pictures of what appears to a prototype of the electrified model testing under heavy camouflage in snowy conditions.

According to the publication, the electric Velar will be the first EV to be built on the brand’s all-new EMA platform.

The platform is crucial to the JLR group as it will underpin smaller, high-volume electric SUVs, such as replacements for the Land Rover Discovery Sport and Range Rover Evoque.

The brand has previously confirmed its MLA platform, which underpins current plug-in hybrid and mild-hybrid models, will be used on the Range Rover Electric, which is due to land next year. The Velar is expected to debut in 2026.

New electric models will be built at the Range Rover's Halewood plant in the UK, after the brand announced it will invest £500 million ($A978 million) into the facility earlier this year to produce hybrid and electric vehicles.

Range Rover has not moved towards electrification as quickly as its JLR sibling Jaguar, which announced it will cease production of all of its current models to reinvent itself as an electric-only, luxury brand by the middle half of next year.

That transition will commence with Jaguar’s first electric grand tourer which will be previewed in concept form next month as a Porsche Taycan rival.

Meanwhile, Range Rover announced in February that it would push back plans to introduce six EVs to the market by 2026 to instead focus on its hybrid technology.

The electric Velar is rumoured to utilise US tech firm Nvidia’s AI Drive chip-and-software combination to enable hands-free, eyes-on driving functionality, known in the automotive industry as 'level-two-plus'.

It is the final step before fully-autonomous driving and enables the car to manage several tasks such as acceleration, braking and steering, though it still requires the driver to intervene.

While it isn't currently available in Australia, level-two-plus is currently available in the UK on the Ford Mustang Mach-E on a monthly subscription basis.

At this stage it is unclear whether Range Rover will continue sell a combustion-engined version of the Velar alongside the new electric version.

The Velar is Range Rover’s worst-selling model globally, notching up just 10,000 sales this year to date, of which just 309 were sold in Australia, representing a sales decrease of 25.9 per cent since this time last year.