200,000th Land Rover Freelander 2 Produced

Land Rover has celebrated a production milestone, as the 200,000th Freelander 2 was born at the company’s Halewood, Liverpool plant, three years after the first Freelander 2 rolled off the production line.The vehicle in question is a TD4_e dressed in Biscay Blue and is destined for a customer in the UK, the automotive producer’s largest market.

Land Rover has fitted the Freelander 2 with a stop-start system in early 2009, making the vehicle the first SUV in the world to use intelligent stop-start technology. Since then, stop-start has been included in the standard features of all the diesel manual Freelander 2 vehicles and accounts for almost 50 percent of the SUV’s worldwide sales.

"This achievement is thanks to the Halewood workforce, who have continuously driven improvements since the launch of Freelander 2 to maximize customer satisfaction. I'd like to congratulate the Halewood workforce on this team achievement," said Michael Straughan, Halewood Operations Director.

The Land Rover Freelander 2 TD4_e comes with an improved fuel consumption of 0.8 liters (4.5 mpg) and an 8 percent reduction in CO2 emissions over standard EU2 drive cycle. The vehicle’s stop-start systems shuts the engine off when the vehicle is stationary and starts it when the clutch pedal is depressed.

The system uses a special starter motor that is also used as a generator to recover energy through regenerative braking. The electric current resulted from this is stored in capacitors to restart the engine, minimizing the stress on the car’s electrical system.