MUNRO

Munro M280: the Scottish wildcat

It’s a Scottish combine harvester. Or a bulldozer from north of the border. Or an all-electric off-roader designed to be used in some of the harshest applications in the automotive sphere that… just happens to be made near Glasgow. Actually, it’s all of those things. Which probably warrants at least some sort of explanation. 

Right, so Munro is a start-up that makes the all-electric M280 and M170. They’re single-motored EVs with the tried and tested underpinnings of a much more prosaic vehicle; think beam axles, coils, a triplet of diff locks and a low ‘box transfer case. They’re simplified and pared-back inside and out, delivered in whatever body style you need to complete a job (truck, trayback half-cab, bare chassis with cab). They also look like they were designed by someone for whom Gore-Tex is considered a luxury fabric and a hard hat isn’t a fashion accessory.

But there’s method to the aesthetic simplicity. Tooling is much less of an issue when you’re building a car exclusively out of lightly bent metal, fixing it is easier and it’s stronger. Ditto the drivetrain; all of the Munro’s bits are well understood and easy to fix on-site, simplified and accessible. That matters, because the vehicles aren’t really meant for the urban SUV crowd, or the pseud’s corner that is the butch look of the inter-city overlander.

So who are they for? They’re for forestry, mines, power access, agriculture, mountain rescue and military applications. And they’re to be treated more like the aforementioned bulldozer or piece of plant equipment; invest in a Munro and it’s supposed to last 20 years rather than the more usual five. Which is why they sound expensive. The idea is you buy this eighty grand piece of equipment once, rather than four forty grand pickups which are paté after half a decade in most ‘proper’ work environments. Hours on the unit rather than miles, an investable item rather than a disposable one.

Munro is basically a start-up that was originally looking at electrifying older Land Rovers as a lifestyle option. It soon became clear that there’s a demand in industry for something a bit more rugged and simplified than the current offerings, but with an electric drivetrain – companies keen to lower their CO2 burden with a buyable fix.

Autonews