It Could Be A While Before The U.S. Sees The INEOS Fusilier, And The EV Version Might Never Appear

If you need to know whether a startup automobile company will succeed, the very best place to look is the vehicles it plans to sell in the longer term. Yes, exotic supercar brands can get by with one magnificent machine and a few variations, but proper automobile corporations need portfolios. That is why it’s discouraging, a minimum of for now, that INEOS, which made its name on a reboot of the old-school Land Rover Defender, has delayed the rollout of its Fusilier SUV.

We reported on the Fusilier when INEOS announced it in early 2024, back when the automotive world was a far different, largely tariff-free realm. At the moment, billionaire owner Jim Ratcliffe – who launched the brand after Jaguar Land Rover debuted a brand new Defender and refused to sell him the rights to proceed making the revered yet somewhat crude older model – said that the Fusilier lineup would come with an EV and a range-extending hybrid option. A mid-2027 arrival has been recalibrated for 2028, nonetheless, based on Automotive News.

You would tell by Ratcliffe’s comments in 2024 that he wasn’t terribly psyched about having to go electric after the successful introduction of the Grenadier in 2022. “We’ve got to have this offering, whether we prefer it or not,” he said on the time. Most other carmakers were either leaning into EVs back then, or else lamenting that they did not have an EV program. INEOS, in contrast, really didn’t need EVs since it was simply attempting to sell a throwback SUV to customers who still prized the thoroughly last-century virtues of internal-combustion. This was a business model built on petrol. INEOS’s next vehicle continued that vibe: the Quartermaster is a pickup truck aimed squarely on the U.S. market.

INEOS has adjusted the Fusilier’s plan. Now the corporate says that the gas-hybrid extended-range version will precede the EV. Given the best way the EV market is moving into the U.S., the EV wait could possibly be prolonged. I would not even be particularly surprised if the electrified Fusilier goes away completely; with EV incentives and emissions penalties being deregulated out of existence, the necessity to sell anything aside from gas-powered vehicles within the U.S. is declining. For INEOS, this is definitely pretty excellent news because the corporate is otherwise coping with a tariff situation that it did not have when it was growing the Grenadier business. (Quartermaster was going to face the old chicken tax tariff, but even with that impediment, INEOS figured it was the suitable product for the U.S. if the brand desired to grow.)

The chaos that has gripped the auto industry within the wake of Trump’s tariffs and the passage of the Big, Beautiful Bill does present INEOS with a singular opportunity. Up to now, the corporate has proven that customers want what it’s selling. Growth within the U.S. has been strong, and INEOS wants to extend it by 50 percent, as has been widely reported. The EV market has turn out to be considerably tougher in 2025, but competition has also picked up. Ratcliffe’s grumbling about marketing vehicles which can be required but not demanded might need been prescient. INEOS could possibly be one among the few (possibly the one) automotive startup that genuinely advantages from policy shifts within the U.S.

The really helpful plan of action can be to maneuver fast on Fusilier, ditching the tricky powertrain configuration and mimicking the setup for Grenadier and Quartermaster, each of which source their engines from BMW. There are still loads of gas stations within the U.S.! Off-roaders are also a conservative lot, hence the early support for Grenadier as a Defender redux.

INEOS could also lean into this narrative, promoting their practical commitment to combustion while competitors struggle to determine electrification, including ways during which they will persuade buyers to decide on hybrids. The back–the-future approach has worked quite well for INEOS up to now. For many carmakers, major changes to the auto industry, brought on by tariffs and deregulation, have thrown a wrench into the works. But for INEOS, that wrench could possibly be a present.