Jaguar Land Rover is promising to make only electric cars from 2025 for the Jaguar brand, with the Land Rover brand to also offer electric versions from 2024, CEO Thierry Bolloré announced on Monday (UK time), as the iconic British brands undertake a major shift to net-zero operations.
The announcement forms a key part of the brand’s “Reimagine” global strategy which seeks to evoke a “sustainability-rich reimagination of modern luxury, unique customer experiences, and positive societal impact.” It also comes after the UK government announced it would ban sales of petrol or diesel cars from 2030.
“Together, we can design an even more sustainable and positive impact on the world around us,” Bolloré in a statement.
The new electrification strategy will seek to restore its fortunes after a year where sales flagged and the company – now owned by India’s Tata Motors – barely broke even. It is now aiming for double-digit margins over the coming years as it focuses on “profit-over-volume”.
Jaguar already has one electric vehicle – the Jaguar i-Pace, which in Australia is available from $128,860 before on-road costs.
But by 2025, Jaguar will start building only battery electric vehicles on a dedicated architecture, and will focus on being an “all-electric luxury brand from 2025. The line up will not, however, include the planned all-electric Jaguar XJ, despite being touted by then JLR boss Ralph Speth at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 2019.
On the Land Rover side, it will be at least four years until we see an all-electric luxury SUV sporting the Land Rover badge, the first of six new EV models from the Range Rover, Defender and Discovery lines that are due by 2026 and will account for 60% of all Land Rover sales by 2030.
While the British brand is promising all-electric drivetrains, it will not stick purely to batteries, it said. To prepare for “future demand” it also intends to develop “clean-hydrogen” fuel cell drivetrains which will presumably be used for the Land Rover models.
Jaguar says it will spend about £2.5 billion a year on electrification technologies and the development of connected services to enhance the journey and experiences of customers, alongside data-centric technologies that will further improve their ownership ecosystem.
Jaguar added that its Solihull, West Midlands plant will become the home of the future advanced Jaguar pure electric platform, as well as the Modular Longitudinal Architecture (MLA) that will underpin both electric and combustion engine Land Rover models.
Jaguar Land Rover sold 425,974 vehicles in 127 countries in 2020, but European EV analyst Matthias Schmidt noted that it failed to achieve its CO2 fleet average emissions target of 132g/km – missing it by 2g/km, resulting in a non-compliance fine of Stg35 million.
Bridie Schmidt is associate editor for The Driven, sister site of Renew Economy. She has been writing about electric vehicles since 2018, and has a keen interest in the role that zero-emissions transport has to play in sustainability. She has participated in podcasts such as Download This Show with Marc Fennell and Shirtloads of Science with Karl Kruszelnicki and is co-organiser of the Northern Rivers Electric Vehicle Forum. Bridie also owns a Tesla Model Y and has it available for hire on evee.com.au.