MUNRO VEHICLES (Munro), Scotland’s only volume production car company and manufacturer of all-electric four-wheel drives, has revealed its second model, the Mk_1 Pick-Up at this week’s Fully Charged North event in Harrogate, UK.
Following in the wheel tracks of the Munro Mk_1 Truck launched last December, the Mk_1 Pick-Up “signifies the next milestone” of the company’s “strategic missions to fulfil significant global market demand”.
The £49,995 ($A93,450) all-electric ‘ute’ will likely rival similar models from Ford, Geely, Ram, Rivian and Tesla (see more in the links below) and is said by its maker to offer unique abilities that make it suitable for operation in sectors that include agriculture, construction, defence, mining and utility services.
Finished in striking Munro Yellow, and shown in Performance trim grade, the Mk_1 Pick-Up features a mechanical four-wheel drive system coupled to a choice of electric powertrains, offering 220kW or 375kW across Utility, Range and Performance trims. Munro has not offered a torque value for the lower grade variants, but says the 700Nm offered in Performance guise can hustle the ‘ute’ to 100km/h in “a mere 4.9 seconds”.
Power is drawn from an 82.4kWh battery which may be charged from 15 to 80 per cent in 36 minutes using a 100kW DC charger. Munro quotes an unladen range of 190 miles (305km) which it says enables it “to operate off-road for up to 16 hours on a single charge”.
Up back, the Munro Mk_1 Pick-Up can accommodate a standard Euro pallet between the wheel arches and a payload of up to 1050kg. Braked towing capacity is rated at 3500kg, which the Scottish maker says is sufficient for the “effortless haulage of any cargo from farm implements and livestock to construction and disaster relief equipment”.
Designed, engineered, and built in Britain, the Munro is the first light vehicle to enter production in Scotland in more than four decades.
“Priced from £49,995 ex-VAT (and) with deliveries commencing later this year, we have already secured more than 200 orders for the MK_1 Pick-Up, three of which have come from FTSE 100 companies and ten from FTSE 250 companies” confirmed Munro CEO and co-founder, Russell Peterson.
“With a full two-year order book for both the MK_1 Pick-Up and the MK_1 Truck, Munro is having to expedite its search for larger premises to meet customer demand.
“We launched Munro to fill the significant gap in the market for an electric-powered, four-wheel-drive, utilitarian workhorse. Our vehicles are designed and engineered without compromise from clean sheet principles unimpeded by any existing architecture.
“The result is a rugged construction created for decades of service delivering ultimate, go-anywhere, off-road ability.
“The level of positive feedback we have experienced from media and customers who have test driven the MK_1 Truck has been unprecedented and the response to the new MK_1 Pick-Up has been equally positive.
“This, and the 200 plus pre-orders we have taken across both the truck and Pick-Up models, gives us great confidence that the vehicles Munro has created are precisely what the market wants and needs and that we can play a key role in assisting those operating in challenging environments such as mining, construction, utilities, agriculture, and defence to meet imminent decarbonisation targets.
“This represents a significant global market opportunity and one which, with our financial partners, we are poised to fully exploit as we take the next strategic step and move towards the pre-production prototype stage.”