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Jaguar Land Rover may buy Silverstone racetrack for new HQ

Jaguar Land Rover might add another chapter to its venerable motorsports legacy by purchasing the revered UK racetrack Silverstone to use as its new company headquarters. JLR could reportedly offer 22.7 million pounds ($34.1 million at current rates) to buy the circuit, according to Automotive News Europe, which cites several British media sources. The British automaker would then invest the equivalent of $78 million to turn the historic track into a celebration of the brand, including a museum, experience center, and hotel. The company would also construct space for its marketing team and engineers, Automotive News Europe reports. Motorsports would still continue there, too, which means the course's Formula One legacy is safe. Neither JLR nor the British Racing Drivers' Club, which leases the track, have confirmed the rumors. The BRDC only suggested that it received several confidential offers to purchase the circuit. Silverstone has a motorsports history that goes back to the late 1940s and is often the home to the Formula One British Grand Prix. The track's organizers have a long-term deal to continue hosting the F1 race, too. Today, the course also features major events from MotoGP and the FIA World Endurance Championship. In November, Jaguar released a video that celebrated some of its legacy at Silverstone by bringing the modern XJR and Le Mans-winning XJ-R9 LM at the track. If the company's purchase happens, you can expect to see a lot more Jags and probably some Land Rovers lapping the course. Related Video:

Child cobalt miners: Automakers pledge ethical minerals sourcing for EVs

BERLIN - Leading carmakers including Volkswagen and Toyota pledged on Wednesday to uphold ethical and socially responsible standards in their purchases of minerals for an expected boom in electric vehicle production. Demand for minerals such as cobalt, graphite and lithium is forecast to soar in the coming years as governments crack down on vehicle pollution and carmakers step up their investments in electric models. To cover its plans for more than 80 new models by 2025, Volkswagen alone is looking for partners in China, Europe and North America to provide battery cells and related technology worth more than 50 billion euros ($59 billion). Talks with major cobalt producers, including Glencore, at VW's Wolfsburg headquarters last week ended without a deal. More than half of the world's cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country racked by political instability and legal opacity, and where child labor is used in mines. On Wednesday, a group of 10 leading passenger-car and truck manufacturers announced an initiative to jointly identify and address ethical, environmental, human and labor rights issues in raw materials sourcing. The partnership dubbed "Drive Sustainability" consists of VW, Toyota Motor Europe, Ford, Daimler, BMW, Honda, Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo Cars and truckmakers Scania and Volvo. The alliance "will assess the risks posed by the top raw materials (such as mica, cobalt, rubber and leather) in the automotive sector," said Stefan Crets of the CSR Europe business network. "This will allow Drive Sustainability to identify the most impactful activities to pursue" to address issues within the supply chain.Reporting by Andreas Cremer.Related Video: Image Credit: Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post via Getty Images Green BMW Ford Honda Jaguar Land Rover Mercedes-Benz Automakers Toyota Volkswagen Volvo Green Automakers Green Culture Electric Scania ethics mining

Final Jaguar F-Type produced at Castle Bromwich

Last October, Jaguar told us that the F-Type ZP Edition would be the capstone for the F-Type line, the two-seat coupe and convertible retired at the end of the model year. That turned out to be maybe kind-of a little true; standard versions of the car will continue on sale until early 2025 as Jaguar sells out the car's production. The real last stand for the F-Type is the car above, the final unit down the line at Jaguar's Castle Bromwich facility on May 22, 2024, with its siblings the XE sedan and XF Sportbrake. Colored Giola Green outside with a Tan Windsor leather interior under a black roof, the F-Type will use its 5.0-liter V8 to drive to the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust collection on the same day that its inspiration, the Jaguar E-Type, ended production in 1974 with a British Racing Green Series III Roadster. Speaking of which, from 1961 to 1974, Jaguar says it built 75,528 E-Types across three Series'. From 2013 to 2024, the automaker built 87,731 F-Types.   Now that the dealer inventory's stocked, what comes next is the end of the long slog to electrification. We won't know what that looks like until the first product gets revealed sometime next year. It's been three years since Jaguar outlined its electric reinvention, promising a two-door sports car and two SUVs that would contend with Bentley and Rolls-Royce. Since then, the electric coupe is said to have given way to a four-seat GT that we presume has four doors, Autocar saying this one could be considered a reborn XJ, although larger and much more luxurious than the last. Sitting on the new long-wheelbase JEA platform, the outlet predicts each will come with baseline specs of at least least 450 horsepower, all-wheel drive and all-wheel steering, six-figure prices. and super-fast charging times. Designs will be minimalist, heavy on touchscreens and sustainable materials, which are pages pulled from the Range Rover playbook. And we're told the Leaper, Jaguar's leaping cat emblem around since World War II, will be put to bed. Instead, identification will be by Jaguar wordtype outside and in — another Range Rover tic. Even stranger: Autocar says none of the three will fit a rear window. Like the Polestar 3, the Jaguars will use "a digital 'mirror' at the base of the windscreen." If this is true, a mirror on the instrument panel at the bottom of the windshield would be proper old-school Jaguar. The GT is meant to debut first, next year, one SUV per year for the two years afterward.