Tata-owned Jaguar Land Rover to invest £15 billion in EVs
To launch a new EV in 2025 and its Halewood plant in the UK will become an all-electric production facility
Published: 20th April 2023 12:01 PM | Last Updated: 20th April 2023 12:01 PM | A+A A-
Jaguar Land Rover India's fully electric SUV Jaguar I-PACE. (For representational purpose)
NEW DELHI: Tata group-owned Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) on Wednesday said it would be investing 15 billion pounds (£) ($19 billion) over the next five years in developing electric vehicles (EVs) and in future technologies.
JLR also said that they would be launching a new EV in 2025 and that its Halewood plant, in the UK, will become an all-electric production facility. Further, JLR’s next-generation medium-size SUV architecture, electrified modular architecture (EMA), will now be pure-electric.
The British luxury carmaker’s aggressive plan to go green comes as it faces stiff competition from rival German carmakers - Mercedes and BMW- who have launched multiple vehicles in the EV space.
Add to it, billionaire Elon Musk’s Tesla has cut its EV prices for the sixth time this year, posing a big threat to incumbents. JLR, on the other hand, has only one EV in its line-up, the all-electric I-Pace launched in 2018. Since the onset of covid-19 pandemic, the carmaker has been facing difficulty in ramping up its production due to an acute shortage of semiconductors even as demand for its SUVs stood strong.
Things, however, have started to change for good for JLR as parent firm Tata Motors in January reported consolidated net profit for the first time in two years in December 2022 quarter after the British brand saw a 28% growth in revenue to 6.04 billion pound sterling, and its earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) margin expanded 230 basis points YoY to 3.7%.
JLR CEO Adrian Mardell on Wednesday reaffirmed the business’s commitment to its Reimagine strategy under which JLR aims to achieve a net cash-positive position by FY25 and double-digit EBIT by 2026. JLR confirmed it will start to invite applications for client orders for the modern luxury all-electric Range Rover later this year.
The first of its next-generation medium-size modern luxury SUVs will be an all-electric model from the Range Rover family, launching in 2025. The carmaker added that it will retain the flexible modular longitudinal architecture (MLA) on which Range Rover and Range Rover Sport are built offering internal combustion engine (ICE), HYBRID and battery electric vehicle (BEV) options.
