Grace, Pace and Space: Jaguar's Electrified Future

Romanosky Automotive Weekly Gazette

"The Greatest Crumpet Collector Known To Man" - Henry Manney

I am fairly well acquainted with the Jaguar brand, being around the cars from Coventry most of my life. I was just about born in one: a Mark II 3.4 sedan that had its front wheel seize on the way to the hospital. My dad had the Mk II, and later a 420G which I remember rolling down the driveway into traffic after I was playing with the handbrake. It had a fabulous array of buttons on the dash. When I was about nine, my father brought home a 1976 XJS - the first year of production. I was quite proud of it and invited any visitor to 'look at the V12 engine in my dad's car'. I knew about C-Types and D-Types that won Le Mans five years in a row, disk brakes and aerodynamics well before I was ten.

When I started dating Sarah I was driving the Azure Blue Series 3 E-Type (top), which didn't hurt my chances with her. I recently restored another of these for a client, in its original colour of Greensand - which I later discovered was the same colour as my dad's XJS in the photo below. I've just received my second XJSC; both are one-owner Calgary cars that I'm re-commissioning after lengthy storage. In short, Jaguar is brand that I identify with.

Your author in 1976. Greensand Jaguar XJS in the background; our attitudes to all manner of transportation have changed since then.

Like all British manufacturers, Jaguar's fortunes have had their ups and downs, mostly struggling with inadequate capital and aging products. In the early 1990s the XJS was still in production and the XJ40 sedan was selling poorly. Ford ownership injected much needed capital and new products with a more curvaceous XJ sedan, and the sporty XK8 sports car. in 2008, after Ford tired of losing money, Jaguar was sold to Tata, the Indian conglomerate. They also purchased 'The English Patient' known as Land Rover, and formed Jaguar Land Rover or JLR. Tata has done a good job with both brands creating very desirable products, nearly doubling the sales in the last ten years.

JLR's sales (in thousands) for the last decade. The period of 2015-2019 is characterized by the introduction of several new SUV's for both Jaguar and Land Rover. Covid-related supply chain problems account for reduced sales in the last few years.

With the transition to e-mobility, Jaguar is perhaps facing the greatest challenge of its 100 year-old existence. Jaguar's new CEO, Thierry Bollore, launched a new strategy for Jaguar Land Rover, 'Reimagine', which maps out Jaguar and Land Rover's transition to electrification. It is an extremely bold strategy, which would appear to completely re-define the company as a maker of Luxury EV's by 2025. In his half hour presentation, the words 'sporty' and 'performance' were not mentioned at all - but we heard all about consolidation, rightsizing, data, autonomous driving, Hydrogen fuel cells and the usual PR.

'Reimagine' sees Land Rover with two new platforms that can accommodate full electric and PHEV, while Jaguar is to receive one BEV-only platform.

Bollore will basically freeze development on current Jaguars, separate Jaguar and Land Rover platforms, kill the all-electric XJ flagship sedan and write off the $1.2B of investment in it. Then, find a partner to develop a BEV platform (!) and come out with a bunch of new EV's by 2025. Oh, and stay out of the SUV market, reject cab-forward designs, and create sports cars and sedans with traditional proportions and "exceptional desirability".

I think what this comes down to is to ditch Jaguar as we know it, and become and EV start up.

Jaguar 'Reimagined' takes the styling department, and little else, from the current organization. They don't have a next-gen EV or any proprietary technology, so they have to buy it from somebody else, and then rely on the stylists to create "exceptional desirability". They don't have the customer base for these products, so they will have to find that too.

I don't really know where to start.

Betting the company on a complete transformation to EV's in three years, when the only EV you have accounts for 13% of sales and is to be discontinued, and only 32% of your customers would consider an EV for their next purchase, seems incredibly reckless to me.

2025 is less than one buying cycle away. Jaguar doesn't even have any concept cars. They are going to come out with a fresh batch of EV's in less than 3 years? Alienate 68% of their customer base? Find new markets? Create a whole new software/connectivity platform in 3 years from scratch?

'Reimagine' basically ignores 100 years of Jaguar brand equity and existing client base in the hope of chasing the Silicon Valley startups, but without the technology or culture to compete with them.

This is a strategy that isn't from a 'car guy' or 'product guy' - and that is fatal in the car business. 'Reimagine' basically ignores 100 years of Jaguar brand equity and existing client base in the hope of chasing the Silicon Valley startups, but without the technology or culture to compete with them.

First, the successful new EV start ups such as Rivian and Lucid have come to the market with new technology and better products. If all you have is a pretty design on off-the-shelf components, you're not going to sell many cars - especially if they are over $100k. Bollore wants to target a younger, wealthy urban demographic - but they are unlikely to be swayed by looks alone.

The current BEV's are cab-forward for a reason - these designs allow for the most efficient packaging. Going to the trouble of developing a BEV platform, then reverting to a traditional long hood profile, doesn't make any sense.

The world wants SUV's and cross-overs. A strategy that ignores this is bound to fail.

The rest of the global automobile manufacturers are doing everything they can to share platforms, and with EV's this should be easy. Not taking advantage of synergies within JLR i.e. Land Rover platforms, seems like a gigantic missed opportunity.

I'm not sure what was broken at JLR, at least with the product strategy. They were on the right path using the Land Rover MLA (Modular Longitudinal Architecture) platform for a new electric flagship XJ sedan and larger 3-row F-Pace SUV. The XJ is almost production ready, and it is astonishing to me that JLR won't produce it, given the success of the Porsche Taycan, which now outsells the iconic 911. There are waiting lists for the Mercedes-Benz EQS and the Lucid air is off to a good start. How does it make sense to not ship the dealers a new car for three years, when the XJ could be on the showroom floor within a year, and a 3 row electric F-Pace the year after? If the JLR dealers didn't also have Range Rover, most of them probably wouldn't make it until 2025.

Land Rover has three main product lines which they describe as; Range Rover for leaders, Discovery for families and Defender for adventurers. That leaves anything sporty for Jaguar - which neatly fits the brand's values.

Jaguar did a really nice job with the I-Pace in terms of its ride/handling, which is much sharper and more involving than anything else in its segment. It embodies Jaguar's brand values of 'Grace, Space and Pace'. The issue with it is price - at over $100,000 it is competing in a very thin market. Jaguar needs to deliver a range of SUV's and cross overs, both PHEV and BEV, that can sell in the $60,000-$80,000 price range, which is ten times more voluminous than the over $100k segment. Sharing platforms with Land Rover is the way to do that.

Let's hope common sense, and a lot of noise from JLR customers and dealers, will cause Mr. Bollore to have a change of heart.