Land Rover Recalls 23,677 More SUVs as Power Loss Recall Tops 194,000

• Jaguar Land Rover has added 23,677 more SUVs to a recall for a DC-DC converter fault that can kill drive power and every exterior light at once, pushing the total number of affected vehicles past 194,000.
• The defect sits in the 48-volt mild-hybrid system’s converter, and NHTSA records show the failure can unfold in about ten seconds, ending with the engine shutting off.
• Jaguar Land Rover has no permanent fix yet. Owners get a temporary software update now and a second letter once engineers finish a lasting repair.

A Ten-Second Countdown to a Dead Engine

Owners describe it the same way: a warning light, then a strange calm before everything goes dark. Federal filings on recall 26V599 lay out the sequence in flat, procedural language, but the effect is anything but routine. An electrical warning appears on the dash. The transmission drops into neutral on its own. A transmission fault message follows. Then the exterior lights cut out, the climate control dies, and the engine shuts down, all inside roughly ten seconds.

That sequence is now linked to 23,677 additional Jaguar and Land Rover SUVs, on top of the 170,169 vehicles the automaker recalled for the same root cause in April. Combined, the two actions cover close to 194,000 vehicles built across six years of production, making this one of the largest electrical recalls any luxury SUV brand has issued in 2026.

Which Vehicles Are Affected

The expanded recall, filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration under campaign number 26V599000, covers 2019 through 2024 Range Rover Sport models, 2020 through 2024 Range Rover, Range Rover Evoque, Discovery Sport and Defender models, and 2021 through 2024 Range Rover Velar, Discovery, Jaguar E-Pace and Jaguar F-Pace models.

Owners can check whether their specific vehicle is included by entering their 17-digit VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls or by calling the NHTSA Vehicle Safety Hotline at 1-888-327-4236. Jaguar Land Rover dealers can also run a VIN check on request, and the automaker has committed to notifying every registered owner directly by mail.

What Actually Fails, and Why

The part at the center of the recall is a DC-DC converter, a solid-state component that steps voltage down from the vehicle’s 48-volt mild-hybrid battery to the 12-volt electrical system that runs headlights, fuel pumps, control modules and interior displays. Older Land Rovers relied on a belt-driven alternator for that job. The newer mild-hybrid architecture swaps that mechanical part for a computerized one governed by firmware and current limits, and it trims mass and frees up packaging space when it works, then turns brittle when it does not.

NHTSA’s filing points to two separate causes feeding into the same failure. The first is an electrical overload that can occur in moments of high power demand, such as rapid acceleration combined with multiple electrical systems drawing current at once. The second is a software error that can prevent the converter from restarting properly after it trips. Either fault can trigger the same cascade: the 12-volt system loses power, and everything wired to it, lights, pumps, sensors and eventually the engine’s own control modules, goes with it.

Mild-hybrid 48-volt systems have spread quickly across the industry over the past five years, showing up in vehicles from Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Ram and Volkswagen as automakers chase small fuel-economy gains without the cost of a full hybrid drivetrain. Land Rover is not the first brand to run into DC-DC converter trouble. Ford and General Motors have each issued smaller recalls tied to similar components in the past three years. Engineers who work on high-voltage architecture say the part is one of the more failure-prone additions in modern electrical systems: it sits between two very different voltage worlds and has to manage both without a mechanical backup.

A Pattern Consumer Reports Has Flagged Before

The recall lands at an awkward moment for Jaguar Land Rover’s reliability reputation. Consumer Reports has ranked Land Rover near the bottom of its annual brand reliability survey for several years running, citing electrical gremlins, infotainment glitches and drivetrain software faults as recurring owner complaints. This recall fits that pattern closely: it is not a mechanical part wearing out, it is code and current management getting the handoff wrong between two electrical systems that did not exist together in Land Rovers a decade ago.

For buyers comparing a used Range Rover or Defender against rivals from BMW, Mercedes-Benz or Genesis, that reliability gap belongs in the calculation alongside price and features. A recall itself is not necessarily a red flag. Nearly every automaker issues them, and a completed recall on a used vehicle’s history often means the risk has already been addressed. An open recall with no permanent fix yet, on a vehicle from a brand with an above-average electrical complaint rate, is a different calculation, and it is one more reason a VIN check earns its place before any purchase, more so here than for a routine campaign.

No Permanent Fix Yet

Jaguar Land Rover has not finished developing a lasting repair. For now, the remedy is a free software update meant to reduce the odds of the converter overloading and to correct the restart error. Dealers began mailing interim notification letters for the original April recall in June, and the company has told regulators that interim letters for the newly added 23,677 vehicles will go out starting November 13. A second letter, describing a permanent hardware or firmware fix, will follow once one exists.

In the meantime, Jaguar Land Rover says it is not aware of any crashes or injuries tied to the defect. That is a meaningful distinction from many safety recalls, but it does not make the underlying risk theoretical. A vehicle that loses drive power and every exterior light on a dark highway is a hazard regardless of whether a collision has been reported yet, and the interim software patch is designed specifically to reduce how often the failure occurs while the company works on something more permanent.

What Owners Should Do Now

Anyone driving an affected Range Rover, Discovery, Defender, Velar, E-Pace or F-Pace from the covered model years should check their VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls now rather than waiting for a letter to arrive. Mailed notices can take weeks to catch up with an already-completed technical campaign. If the vehicle is included, owners can schedule the software update at any authorized Jaguar Land Rover dealer at no cost.

Drivers who notice any of the warning signs described in the recall, an unexpected electrical warning light, the transmission unexpectedly shifting to neutral, or a transmission fault message, should pull over as soon as it is safe to do so and contact their dealer rather than continuing the trip. The failure sequence can end with a complete loss of exterior lighting, so any early warning sign is reason enough to get off the road at the next safe exit, at night or on the highway most of all.

For anyone shopping the used market, the wide model-year spread involved, 2019 through 2024 across nine different Land Rover and Jaguar model lines, means a used-vehicle history check by VIN is worth doing before buying. A car built in that window could carry the open recall regardless of trim or mileage. A dealer can confirm in minutes whether the software update has already been applied.

What Happens Next

NHTSA recall filings typically stay open until a manufacturer either completes a permanent fix or the agency closes the case, and expansions like this one are common once engineers trace a defect across a wider range of production dates than first suspected. Jaguar Land Rover’s own numbers suggest that is exactly what happened here: the April recall covered a narrower band of vehicles, and the September expansion widened it after further investigation identified more affected units built with the same converter and software combination.

Owners should expect a second round of correspondence once the permanent remedy is ready, and it would not be unusual for the total vehicle count to grow again if the investigation turns up additional affected models before the case closes.

Sources:

• FOX 7 Austin
• The Autowire
• FleetPoint
• NHTSA