Jaguar to go all-electric by 2025

“Reimagine” is the name chosen for the sweeping revitalisation of both Jaguar and Land Rover brands, the UK’s largest automotive business but one which has suffered of late, compounded by a 23.6 per cent production drop owing to the pandemic.

Reimagine sets out the future path for both brands according to a new global strategy that “allows us to enhance and celebrate (both brands’) uniqueness like never before,” according to Bolloré. JLR says the journey to electrification will culminate in 2039 when it becomes a net zero carbon business.

What does it mean for Jaguar and Land Rover buyers? The company is promising that all current model nameplates will continue, and that they will all be available in pure electric form by the end of the decade. The electric models will be based on separate architectures and the cars will continue to have separate personalities.

At Jaguar, the promised battery-powered XJ originally due to be unveiled in 2020 has been canned in favour of a new luxury electric flagship, which JLR says “may” be called XJ. This will use a new electric-only architecture which will also form the basis of the other models in the Jaguar line-up, to make what the company calls a “dramatically beautiful new portfolio of emotionally engaging designs and pioneering next-generation technologies.” Every Jaguar will be pure-electric from 2025.

At Land Rover, six pure electric variants of current models will be launched in the next five years, across the familiar three families of Range Rover, Discovery and Defender. The first all-electric variant will arrive in 2024. Unlike Jaguar, it will continue with plug-in and mild hybrids, using the MLA platform for both electrified internal combustion engined models as well as full electric variants. The company anticipates that by 2030 around 60 per cent of Land Rovers sold will be equipped with zero tailpipe powertrains.

Part of Reimagine’s annual R&D spend of £2.5 billion will go to develop hydrogen fuel-cell power “in preparation for future demand” for hydrogen-powered vehicles. JLR says it will have hydrogen prototypes running on UK roads within the next 12 months.

Other priorities of the new plan are more connected services, more sharing with other Tata Group companies, and “repurposed and reorganised” manufacturing facilities – but with the promise that there will be no plant closures, at home or overseas. Jaguar’s new pure electric platform will be made in Solihull.

“As a human-centred company, we can, and will, move much faster and with clear purpose of not just reimagining modern luxury but defining it for two distinct brands,” said Mr Bolloré. “Brands that present emotionally unique designs, pieces of art if you like, but all with connected technologies and responsible materials that collectively set new standards in ownership. We are reimagining a new modern luxury by design.”