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Jaguar-Land Rover builds millionth vehicle at Halewood

Jaguar-Land Rover is not what you'd call a volume automaker by any stretch of the imagination. But in the dozen years since it started manufacturing at its Halewood plant near Liverpool, England, the automaker has already built its millionth vehicle.
The landmark vehicle is a Range Rover Evoque, done up in white with red roof and mirrors, black wheels and a red and black interior. The crossover is set to be donated to Cancer Research UK, which will auction it off next year to help fund its projects in the north-west of the country.
Halewood started manufacturing the Jaguar X-Type in 2001, then went on to assemble the Land Rover LR2 / Freelander 2 before taking on production of the Evoque a year and a half ago. The facility reached the 300,000-unit milestone just last year as production moved to a 24-hour cycle for the first time in either marque's history.

Jaguar Land Rover Special Vehicle Operations could build standalone models

Jaguar Land Rover may be set to turn its Special Vehicle Operations division into something much bigger than a mere in-house tuner. Bloomberg spoke to the head of JLR's high-performance, customization outfit, John Edwards, who hinted that his team may move beyond simply modifying F-Types, Range Rovers and the like. "We're certainly looking at that, and we've got the capability to do that," Edwards told AN. "Is there an opportunity for us to do a completely standalone car? Maybe." Such a move into full-scale, standalone models would be a big step, particularly for a division that's still kind of in its infancy. Bloomberg references the success of Mercedes-AMG, but the German division has had the benefit of decades of growth. AMG spent years and years building high-performance versions of all manner of mainstream Mercedes vehicles, before moving onto cars like the SLS AMG and AMG GT, which have no mainstream analog. In other words, AMG had a long time to develop a reputation building high-performance vehicles that people know and recognize before it moved into building vehicles of its own. We aren't entirely convinced that SpecOps wouldn't benefit from taking a similar approach, delivering additional SVR vehicles, like the rumored XE SVR, before striking out on its own. We'd like to know what you think, though. Is it already time for Special Vehicle Operations to build standalone models, or should it learn to walk before it runs by modifying more of Jaguar Land Rover's existing product. Have your say in Comments. Related Video:

Jaguar Land Rover gives Lyft $25M and a fleet of cars

Lyft recently raised $600 million in a massive funding round, and now we know that $25 million of that came from Jaguar Land Rover, via its mobility services subsidiary InMotion. The car maker's investment in Lyft goes beyond just funds, however; it's providing Lyft drivers with a fleet of Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles as part of the tie-up, and it's also going to work with the ride-hailing tech company on autonomous vehicle testing. This is yet another high-profile partner for Lyft after a spate of recent new collaborators, including Waymo and, just last week, Nutonomy. Now, Jaguar Land Rover is also joining the company's Open Platform for autonomous cars: The collaboration with InMotion will see the Jaguar Land Rover-owned company "develop and test its mobility services, including autonomous vehicles" using Lyft's platform. Lyft's ability to rapidly bring on a lot of partners in the car maker space, specifically around autonomy, may have a lot to do with rival Uber's ongoing problems, which now also include mounting calls for CEO Travis Kalanick to step back, at least temporarily, from his leadership role. Lyft has also been pretty clear about seeking to partner on autonomy, rather than pursue its own tech, which is likewise different from Uber's current approach. Uber, too, has brought automakers to the table around self-driving services and making use of its ride hailing platform for mobility service offerings. Both Uber and Lyft seem interested in being the layer that connects riders and these future services, and for automakers, it means leaving a complex and challenging part of the picture to partners with experience and expertise, rather than having to spin up that part of the tech business themselves. The fleet provision in the deal is also interesting, and suggests the partnership between the two could involve more strategic cooperative service offerings ahead of the advent of commercial self-driving tech. Lyft gaining more ground among automakers beyond longtime partner GM also explains why it was reported that the ride hailing company turned down overtures regarding a potential acquisition by the Detroit-based automaker.Written by Darrell Etherington for TechCrunch.Related Video: