JLR has often been criticised for being behind the curve on electric vehicle development, even after they were first to market in the premium luxury sector with their battery electric Jaguar I Pace in 2018. But it seemed they were squandering their position as BMW, Audi and Porsche forged on with multiple electric car launches over the past five years.
In fairness to JLR, they were facing multiple headwinds such as falling sales – particularly for their Jaguar brand – which were exasperated by Covid and the semiconductor chip shortages and losing money each year since 2019. This all required structural reform including thousands of job losses, a new product plan, and top management changes.
Now with a new CEO in place – Adrian Mardel – and an aligned board of directors all that is changing. JLR is making money again and its profitable Land Rover products are in hot demand across the world, particularly for the high-end superlative Range Rover and Defender models.
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Under its ‘Reimagine’ luxury by design strategy, JLR is now forging ahead with vehicle electrification plans and we shall see a battery-electric Range Rover next year along with a new range of all-electric Jaguars from 2025. It is all being funded by a £15bn investment pot over the next five years.
We often hear about mega projects such as new battery gigafactories – JLR’s owner the IndianTata Group is building one Somerset, UK costing £4bn – and factory retooling – JLR is preparing their Halewood, Solihull and Nitra (Slovakia) factories to build electric cars – but there are more local investments in Coventry too. To support their electrification product plan JLR has just opened a new state-of-the-art Future Energy lab at its engineering centre at Whitley in Coventry.
The £250 million investment has created a 323,000 sq ft engineering test facility to develop Electric Drive Units (EDUs) for JLR’s next-generation pure electric Range Rover, Defender, Discovery and Jaguar models. This represents a scale-up in the luxury car manufacturer’s electric vehicle (EV) development journey and has created 350 high-value new engineering jobs.
It is all part of the company’s drive towards an electric future as it invests £15bn over the next five years. The new facility will significantly increase JLR’s in-house test and development capacity and will reduce the cost and emissions associated with sending fleets of prototype cars around the world for testing.
The EDU testing process at Whitley is unique in the UK and Europe and the EDUs will undergo complex testing methods for extended periods of time to explore potential capacity. This includes vehicle in-the-loop testing – a vital part of the test process – examining real vehicle test movements in a simulation which will allow more scenarios to be tested in an efficient cost-effective manner.
The facility will deliver a sustainable method of testing using advanced regenerative energy technology where regenerated energy from each test cycle is redirected into the local supply, reducing the input of new electrical energy required.
More than 200 EV engineers are already working at the new facility, and a further 150 roles will be created, providing an employment boost to Coventry’s local economy. JLR is also planning to further invest £22 million next year as it continues to upgrade the Whitley site.
JLR’s next electric car (a Range Rover) is already undergoing testing on the rigs at the new facility as its EDUs are designed, developed and tested by the Whitley-based JLR engineers getting it ready for launch next year – and we can expect a product reveal later this year. Thomas Mueller – JLR’s Executive Director of Product Engineering – said: “Our vehicles are, and continue to be, at the forefront of an all-electric automotive future.
“This facility, a core component of our Reimagine strategy, is essential to providing the advanced testing capabilities that will be vital to the performance and reliability of the modern luxury vehicles we are proudly developing”.
This all demonstrates that JLR is intent on creating in-house capabilities and facilities for electric vehicle development rather than just outsourcing it to external partner companies. It’s great to see the Whitley site at the forefront of the engineering of the new electric cars, and I am sure that more investment will go there in the future, safeguarding high-value employment in Coventry.
