The Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) has been blowing a lot of smoke, so to speak, over its ambitions to produce alternative fuel vehicles for several years now. Having partnered with Tongji University's engineering faculty in 2005, SAIC invested nearly $300 million in a new division dedicated towards developing alternative propulsion systems. Now the Chinese automaker is finally tipped to launch its first hybrid as early as next year.

SAIC purchased the Rover brand from BMW several years ago, but not the name, resulting in old Rovers being produced by the Chinese automaker under the name Roewe. It's the old Rover 75, now called the Roewe 750, that will debut SAIC's fuel-efficient initiative. It will feature a mild hybrid system, which assists the existing internal combustion engine under acceleration but is incapable of propelling the vehicle on its own. Having partnered with GM on hybrids built in China under a joint venture, this a decent first step on its own for an automaker in a country behind the curve on green transportation. SAIC's next target is to launch an all-electric vehicle sometime in the near future.

[Source: Automotive News Europe – subs. req'd]

After British based Rover group finally ran out of gas last year, the road kill was gobbled up by two Chinese companies, Nanjing Automobile and Shanghai Automotive (SAIC). Nanjing got most of the tooling and parts, while SAIC got the intellectual property, such as it was. Both companies are now ramping up to build new versions of the last Rover models in China, with SAIC going with the name Roewe, apparently a Chinese version of Rover. SAIC showed the "new" Roewe 750 at the recent Beijing auto show, and British magazine AutoExpress noticed that they also had a new hybrid variant. Not much detail is available, but apparently low-cost is the main priority. They will apparently be using a setup similar to the Saturn Vue Green Line with the motor sitting between engine and gearbox. It seems likely that it won't be able to run in electric only mode, but SAIC is claiming a 25 percent reduction in fuel consumption.

[Source: AutoExpress]

Land Rover North American VP Richard Beattie was on the podium in New York to show Americans the Land Rover Land_e, which makes use of the company's e-Terrain technology to provide improvements in emissions and fuel economy, without impacting on- or off-road performance. Included in its technology portfolio are an integrated starter-generator, an electric motor in the rear drive axle that provides tractive power and also enables the "seamless" propshaft disconnect and use of Ford's Powershift dual-clutch semiautomatic transmission. The concept was billed in Geneva as being powered by a biodiesel oil-burner, but apparently Land Rover thought that we'd be more impressed if they told us 'mericans that it ran on E85 (when the prototype is a series of flashing lights and not actual hardware, it's easy to make such changes).

The chaps from Land Rover also announced Go Beyond TV, which makes the brand "the first auto maker to offer [its] own broadband TV station". The programming is said to focus more on the "Land Rover brand spirit" than the SUVs themselves, with six different "channels" (Places, People, Adventure, Sport, Culture, and Land Rover) of lifestyle programming.

We've posted a few more live shots of the Land_e after the jump.