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Jaguar Land Rover might buy another luxury brand that it doesn't need

It seems that Jaguar Land Rover may be getting bigger in the near future. According to Bloomberg, the company is looking at acquiring some tech companies, and possibly yet another luxury car brand, provided that it fits with the current lineup of cars. On the surface, this makes some sense since Bloomberg reports that a whopping 78 percent of Tata Motors' revenue comes from luxury brands. And of course, any kind of tech acquisition could be useful considering the rapid development of electric and autonomous vehicles. But dig a little deeper, and a possible luxury brand acquisition just doesn't make sense for Jaguar Land Rover. The main reason for this is that the Jaguar and Land Rover brands have the luxury market thoroughly covered. Both brands offer full luxury lines from entry-level to high-end ( Discovery Sport to Range Rover on the Land Rover side, and XE to XJ on the Jaguar side). They also cater to every kind of luxury, from sporty vehicles such as the F-Type and SVR Land Rovers, to cushy luxury machines such as the XJ and Range Rover. So whether the company is competing with BMW or Mercedes, Jaguar and Land Rover have the bases covered. There aren't any other typical luxury brands that would actually add anything to the current lineup. In fact, adding another conventional luxury brand could actually result in the new brand poaching existing Jaguar and Land Rover buyers, rather than picking up new ones. What would make more sense for Jaguar Land Rover would be to pick up either a more mainstream brand, or an ultra-luxury marque. Neither Jaguar nor Land Rover has something that competes directly with the likes of Ford or Toyota in the mainstream game, or Rolls-Royce or Bentley at the top of the luxury heap. Picking up a brand in one of these segments would allow JLR and Tata Motors to actually expand offerings and pick up more sales, rather than having an internal competitor. What path would be ideal? Probably going even farther upmarket. Supercar makers and ultra-luxury brands continue to sell well, and there's the potential for significant profit by layering on features and content to existing platforms. Perhaps the best possibility for a high-end complement to Jaguar Land Rover would be Aston Martin. Not only does it have a strong reputation and line-up, it also could handle both supercars and luxury sedans, thanks to its Lagonda sub brand. Of course it would require Aston Martin to be receptive to a purchase.

Jaguar I-Pace concept previews all-electric SUV for 2018

It seemed that Tesla would stand alone for years with a battery-electric SUV. The Germans were coming, of course, but they appeared content to time their battery push until government regulations forced them there around 2020. That's all changed. Jaguar is promising to turn its I-Pace concept SUV into a full-fledged production crossover SUV within two years. It's Jaguar's way of leaping from internal-combustion power, clean over the top of plug-in hybrids, straight to zero-emission battery-electric vehicles. It says a lot about Jaguar's focus that the second SUV in its production history will also be its first electric car. It debuts this week at the Los Angeles auto show. The Indian-owned carmaker is promising the five-seat I-Pace will look, feel, handle, and perform like a proper Jaguar, too, with a 0-60-mph time of around four seconds. With 516 pound-feet of torque being pumped out of its two electric motors, the I-Pace has as much gristle as the pure-bred F-Type SVR sports car, and it has it from zero rpm. It's also promising the two motors will combine for 400 horsepower, too. It won't need to compromise on range to get its performance, with Jaguar promising the I-Pace will stretch across to 220 miles of range from its 90-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack. It will also take two hours to charge on a 50-kW fast-charging DC station, or achieve 80 percent charging in 90 minutes, and Jaguar insists commuters who drive about 30 miles a day would only need charging once a week. It won't be the last EV from Jaguar Land Rover, either, with its scalable modular architecture designed from scratch to spread across the corporate portfolio and to move down to smaller sedans and coupes or up to full-sized Range Rover contenders. The crossover SUV uses the alloy battery casing as an integral, stressed part of the I-Pace's chassis architecture, lowering the ride height and adding body rigidity. After entering the all-electric Formula E championship this year, Jaguar says it designed and engineered the batteries and the electric motors in-house. "This is an uncompromised electric vehicle designed from a clean sheet of paper: we've developed a new architecture and selected only the best technology available," said Jaguar Land Rover's technical development leader, Wolfgang Ziebart.

2018 Jaguar F-Pace: Ambient lighting is fun and frustrating

Like so many other automobiles from this decade, our long-term Jaguar F-Pace crossover has customizable interior lighting, a part of the $2,350 Luxury Interior Package. I've previously admitted to the fact that ambient lighting has me split in opinion. On the one hand I know that it's probably going to end up being dated and uncool in the future. On the other, I actually quite enjoy it, possibly because I grew up in the neon-fueled world of early '00s import tuner culture. I also like it from a color-coordination perspective. Our Jaguar's bold blue hue called Caesium can be brought inside with equally bright illumination. It's very satisfying. But that satisfaction of having everything just so is quickly sullied as the center stack and switches are only one color that can't be changed. Admittedly, that's completely normal, but unlike many of those other cars that use neutral white illumination, the Jag's light up in the same blue/teal color that made your Razr phone look cool so many years ago. And so whether you bathe your cabin in blue, red, purple or green light, the ambient lighting will clash with the main switch gear. You can pick a shade of blue for the ambient lighting that roughly matches the switches, but I don't want to compromise my color preference because Jaguar didn't put in LEDs in that would be neutral (or, even better, change to match the ambient settings). I have other complaints about color-matching in the car, too. The instrument panel, which is a flat screen, has a few different display modes, but most of the readouts use a similar (but not quite the same) blue/teal color as the switchgear. So that doesn't match, either. Then, in the sport mode, the instrument screen switches to red. That brings me to my next gripe: all the ambient lighting switches to red when choosing this mode. I get it, red means sporty and Jaguar wants everything about sport mode to feel sporty. But damn it, I paid for custom lighting, let me keep that lighting when I'm also in a sporty mood. I actually sometimes skip the sport mode because I want to be swathed in my favorite hue more than I want slightly more sporty driving dynamics. Oh, and of course the switchgear remains teal/blue even in sport mode. So yes, this is picky. But that's the beauty of evaluating a car like the F-Pace over a longer period of time.