Luxury car manufacturer Jaguar isn’t diving into the shift to electric vehicles just to meet emissions targets. It’s aiming to redefine luxury with its new EV range.
The Land Rover brand will shift to an electric-only range in 2025, as emissions regulations across the globe force manufacturers to drop combustion engines. But for Jaguar, this shift also comes with a rethinking of the brand, with prices starting at around $140,000. This uptick in price puts it level with Bentley and Porsche, elevating it from its current competitors BMW and Audi.
Part of that shift, Jaguar says is that it hasn’t distinguished itself from those current competitors in the past.
“Customers, they see the car, like the car and test the car, and they still go and buy an Audi or a BMW,”Jaguar Land Rover CEO Thierry Bollore said in a recent interview. “That’s the problem. People buy the originals. We are not the originals. We have to get the positioning of Jaguar much different, higher and more original.”
How it breaks away from the pack, Bollore says, is with price, first.
“Luxury starts not far from £100,000 ($140,000 USD). And then modern luxury, for us, is something which is extremely reductive, which is getting positioned in a way that fits with Jaguar in terms of refinement, in terms of modernity, in terms of engineering, in terms of technologies.
“When Jaguar was incredibly successful, at the time when the E-Type got onto the market, it was a copy of nothing. That is what we are preparing now.”
Jaguar I-Pace
Jaguar unveiled its first electric SUV, the I-Pace, in 2018. It was the first premium European EV SUV, winning the 2019 World Car of the Year Award.
Addressing competition in recent years, the forthcoming 2022 I-Pace drops its price by more than $11,000 over last year’s HSE model, despite additional luxury upgrades including LED headlights, 16-way heated and cooled seats, 20-inch dark grey wheels with a contrasting diamond-turned finish, and a Meridian 3D Surround Sound System with 16 speakers (and a subwoofer).
Bollore says the I-Pace will be the transition vehicle to its new EV range. It’s the base for developing the tech in the new EVs, helping the team hit their targets.
The New Jaguar EV Range
Details on the new Jaguar EV range haven’t been offered yet, but it’s likely to see new models as well as some crossovers, including a two-door sporting vehicle.
“The positioning of Jaguar should be very distinct,” says Bollore, “but similar in positioning: it’s modern luxury.”
