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Jaguar Land Rover building new R&D center for hybrids, EVs, autonomous cars

The success of Jaguar Land Rover in recent years has largely been down to a resurgent product lineup, but a recent move into the research and development will see the British-based, Indian-owned brands take the fight to its German rivals more aggressively than ever before.
JLR is investing 50 million pounds ($80,345,000, as of this writing) in a joint R&D center in central England. The move will more than triple its staff dedicated to research, from 150 to 500, with Wolfgang Epple, JLR's Director of Research and Technology telling Automotive News Europe, "In order to play among the big animals in automotive and to be anchored in the mind of customers you have to have offered something unique, to be first in market. We want to be one of the key premier automotive manufacturers."
Jaguar Land Rover's 50-million-pound contribution represents more than half of the 94-million-pound tab, on the so-called National Automotive Innovation Campus. Based at Warwick University, Tata's European Technical Center, Warwick Manufacturing Group and the Higher Education Funding Council, an agency of the British government, are all chipping in for the facility.

2015 Jaguar F-Type R Coupe [w/video]

This is it. This is the nasty cat we've been hankering for most. Whereas the Jaguar F-Type convertible remains the company's purest expression of lifestyle fun and expendable income, it's this coupe version that originally stole our eyeballs and never gave them back when it debuted as the C-X16 Concept way back at the 2011 Frankfurt Motor Show. And now we've had an early turn at driving the most potent variant, the Jaguar F-Type R Coupe.
This F-Type Coupe design is so utterly visually stunning that, even if something dynamically or functionally was not really to our liking, we would still want to have the wherewithal to buy one and garage it, if only to stare at it - not unlike our reaction to the 2007-2009 Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione coupe, then. Whether such beauty needs to be in the form of this $99,000 mondo 542-horsepower R version or the more attainable six-cylinder trim is an open question.
In case you need reminding, that's 542 horses maxing out at 6,500 rpm, along with 502 pound-feet of torque on tap between 2,500 and 5,500 revs. There is no indicator yet as to whether Jaguar will eventually come out with an R version beyond the 488-hp V8 S for the convertible, either, so this may well be our only shot at such hair-brained antics in this small Jag. Small and not quite light, we should add - despite its all-aluminum goodness - the F Coupe rings in at 3,638 pounds. That sort of heft is one thing on the street, but it's quite another on a twisty roadcourse, and we aimed to figure out if the coupe's 80-percent greater stiffness versus the open F-Type (along with its higher attendant spring rates) were enough to make a big difference.

Could Jaguar become an EV-only brand?

Just yesterday we wrote about the Heisenbergian uncertainty surrounding the future of the Jaguar F-Type. A new report in Autocar prompts us to consider extending that ambiguity to the entire Jaguar brand. The UK magazine reports the automaker's product planners have devised a ten-year plan to switch to a pure EV lineup of cars and crossovers. According to Autocar's sources this is a planning exercise and doesn't have the green light, but it's "fairly advanced" and has adherents inside the company. The first shot fired would be an all-electric XJ replacement. That sedan, a "no-holds-barred luxury car" to challenge the Tesla Model S and Porsche Taycan, would provide emissions-free motoring before the Mercedes-Benz S-Class and BMW 7 Series come with their EV propositions. Around 2023, an EV crossover a touch larger than the full-sized Audi E-tron would replace both the XF and XE sedans. Two years later, a new mid-sized I-Pace would debut as both the F-Pace and E-Pace fade out. And two years after that, around 2027, the J-Pace luxury crossover would sigh its last ICE gasp. And what about the F-Type? The report says "with no replacement for F-Type in the works," an electric sports car "is also a possibility." There's no mention of the XK revival. Right now, Jaguar sells seven models - four sedans and three crossovers. As the Autocar article's written, come 2027 Jaguar would have an electric XJ sedan, a full-sized EV crossover, the I-Pace, and perhaps an electric sports car. That's a brave new world - one we're not sure Jaguar dealers could survive in. Problem is that Jaguar and its dealers are having plenty of problems now. Chinese-market volatility, the cloud around diesels, and Brexit uncertainty have contributed to a sales slump so dire that Jaguar's Castle Bromwich plant is going to a three-day week for the rest of the year. The sales flu has spread to Land Rover, too, the brand's Solihull plant closing for two weeks to realign dealer inventory. Considering all that, and with no easy relief in sight, the product planners are apparently debating whether a new, traditional three-model sedan range is worth the investment. The upside of going all-electric is said to be higher sales, with internal estimates supposing 300,000 units annually. Last year Jaguar sold 178,500 units. The marque could rake in larger profit margins on those sales, too, thanks to premium buyers being ready to shell out big ducats for EVs.