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Jaguar Land Rover says half its models will be hybrids or all-electric by 2020

Neither Jaguar nor Land Rover has ever been mistaken for big-time green-car brands, but their parent company is trying to change that. Jaguar Land Rover looks to have as many as half of its models be of the hybrid, plug-in hybrid, or battery-electric variety by 2020, CEO Ralf Speth said at the Los Angeles Auto Show last week. Speth made the announcement while showing off the I-Pace concept compact crossover. The green-car expansion would mark a natural extension of Jaguar Land Rover's decision last year to double the headcount in its advanced-engineering department. As for the five-seat I-Pace, that model will be Jaguar Land Rover's first production electric vehicle when it starts sales in 2018. The car will have a 90-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack that will deliver a single-charge range of about 220 miles. Boasting more than 400 horsepower, the car will also be able to go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in about four seconds. What's also notable is that Jaguar says the model has been designed to be an electric vehicle from the ground up, and hasn't been converted from the platform of an existing model. Of course, Jaguar late last year said it would enter a team in the FIA Formula E electric-vehicle open-wheel racing circuit, so the British badge has made recent noise about upping its green-car quotient. As for the I-Pace, the automaker hasn't revealed pricing on the model, but it's safe to say that it will be quite high. Check out a three-minute video of Speth's presentation here. Related Video:

Geely poaches Jaguar designer Wayne Burgess

The fact is simple: Chinese automaker Geely just poached designer Wayne Burgess from Jaguar. Burgess will oversee a team of 100 designers and staff, in charge of projects encompassing all of Geely's brands, and report to Peter Horbury, Geely's EVP of design. Burgess, who started at Jaguar in 1997, was lately the production studio director for Jaguar Land Rover's Special Vehicle Operations, and the head of Jaguar's production cars. His credits include the F-Type, F-Pace, I-Pace, and current XJ, as well as being an Ian Callum stand-in at events. The implications of this personnel move carry the easy-to-ignore weight of another domino falling in what could be a monumental Chinese long game. Geely owns an eponymous car brand in China, as well the Chinese-Swedish Lynk & Co, Sweden's Volvo, England's Lotus and London Electric Vehicle Company (makers of electric black cabs), Malaysia's Proton, and U.S. flying car startup Terrafugia. Burgess won't need to leave home, because Geely's opening a design center in Coventry, England, to go along with its other centers in Barcelona, Gothenburg, Los Angeles and Shanghai. If you're keeping track, Burgess' flight maintains the quickening pace of talent headed to Chinese automakers that we give scant attention. After Geely bought Volvo in 2010, it moved longtime Volvo designer Peter Horbury, now Burgess' boss, to Shanghai. At the time, the news evoked a chortle. Compare that to last week, when GAC Motor designer David Hilton said, "There are now more auto designers in Shanghai than in any other city in the world, including Detroit and L.A." Hilton, by the way, was Bentley's head of exterior design until September last year. The same month, ex-Rolls Royce pen Giles Taylor, who brought us the Cullinan, jetted to Munich to lead FAW's Hongqi luxury brand. One month before that, ex- Land Rover designer Phil Simmons had taken over at Great Wall brand Haval. One month after that, ex- Mazda and BMW designer Kevin Rice became VP of design at Chery. Ex- Audi man Wolfgang Egger took over at BYD in 2017. Oh yeah, Hilton's comments came in a Wall Street Journal article about this very migration. Mass distribution is nearing the developed world in the Northern Hemisphere, too. Lynk & Co wants to get its papers for Europe this year. Zotye just named its first batch of U.S. dealers in advance of a planned launch here in 2020. Guangzhou Auto was at the same U.S. dealer meetings at Zotye, aiming for a U.S. rollout in early 2020.

Watch thieves dressed like ninjas hit dealership, steal $583,000 worth of Land Rovers

WAUKESHA, Wis. — A group of teenagers believed to be from the Chicago area broke into a luxury car dealership in Wisconsin and drove off with nine vehicles worth more than a half-million dollars, police said. Sunday's heist at a Jaguar-Land Rover dealership in Waukesha was captured on surveillance camera footage showing nine masked suspects filing into the dealership before each drives off in a car in the city about 19 miles (30.5 kilometers) west of Milwaukee. The video also shows one car being backed up and smashed through an overhead service door. Waukesha Police Capt. Dan Baumann said the suspects broke into the dealership about 6 a.m. Sunday, found where its car keys were stored and then activated those key fobs to find the cars they stole. “Nine subjects went out and throughout there looking for keys. One person finds where the keys were hidden and then starts to disseminate those to his friends,” Baumann told WISN-TV. The nine vehicles are valued at more than $583,000, he said. One suspect, a 17-year-old Chicago boy, was arrested Sunday in the southern Wisconsin community of Pleasant Prairie after the stolen vehicle he was driving crashed along Interstate 94 during a police pursuit. He was being held at the Waukesha County Jail on a $50,000 bond and faces burglary, theft and criminal damage to property charges, Baumann said. Police said Sunday that the suspects are believed to be “an organized crime group of teenagers from the Chicago area.” Baumann said Friday that all or most of the teen suspects are known to members of a police task force in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois and police in that two-state region were still searching Friday for the eight other suspects. Six of the nine stolen vehicles have been recovered — four in Chicago, one in the Chicago suburb of Deerfield, and one in Wisconsin after the highway crash that led to the 17-year-old's arrest, he said.