Various announcements today https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56072019



And in the Financial Times

Jaguar Land Rover will wind down carmaking at its Castle Bromwich plant in the UK but will keep the site open as part of a strategy overhaul to steer the historic auto manufacturer towards a fully electric future.

The group will run out production in the coming years of its Jaguar models at the site, which employs more than 2,000 people and, in a surprise lifeline to the facility, move other non-car manufacturing into the plant.

The carmaker had been widely expected to shut the Midlands factory in the long-awaited company revamp, aimed at slashing its current line-up and reaching double-digit earnings margins, announced by chief executive Thierry Bolloré on Monday.

Despite remaining open for other work, Castle Bromwich will become the latest UK site to cease carmaking after Honda said in 2019 it would shut its Swindon plant this year.

The move by JLR, almost 20 years after Ford cancelled car production at its Dagenham plant to focus on engine making, comes after the UK industry saw production fall to its lowest level since 1984 with factories and showrooms shut down as the pandemic hit.

The overhaul is key to reviving JLR, which has fallen behind rivals BMW and Mercedes-Benz in rolling out electric technology, and suffered from uncertainty surrounding the UK’s departure from the EU.

Falling sales due to declining demand for diesel resulted in the underutilisation of its UK manufacturing sites, which include Solihull in the Midlands, Halewood on Merseyside and Castle Bromwich.

A bloated line-up of models from Jaguar, Land Rover and Range Rover lines also led to the brands competing against each other.

Bolloré, the former Renault boss who joined in September, pledged to keep all “core plants” open under the new strategy, but to “repurpose and reorganise” its jumbled network that includes facilities in Slovakia, India, China, Brazil and the UK.

The group will spend £2.5bn a year developing electric and connectivity technology for its cars, with each model in its line-up offering a battery version by the end of the decade, it said.

The first fully electric Land Rover model would be released in 2024, it added.

The company expected to have “almost zero” sales of internal combustion engine models by 2036, Bolloré said. He estimated that 60 per cent of its models would have zero emissions by 2030.

Under the strategy, the Jaguar brand will go all-electric by 2025 and move further upmarket in an attempt to revive the fortunes of the nameplate.

JLR has been slow to roll out electric and hybrid vehicles and been overly reliant on diesel technology to lower its CO2 emissions.

The group paid a £35m fine after missing EU emissions targets last year, and £28m in the US and China to meet fuel-efficiency goals.

It will phase out diesel sales, which until recently accounted for 90 per cent of sales in the UK and Europe, from 2026, and will focus on hydrogen fuel-cell technology as the “logical next step” for its largest models.



The luxury carmaker will also share more technology with its parent company Tata Motors in an effort to cut development costs.

The group also axed earlier plans for a battery version of its flagship Jaguar XJ saloon car, which was to be built at its Castle Bromwich site and had been feted as the saviour of the plant when announced by previous management in 2019.

Cancelling plans for the model was expected to lead to a write-off of at least £300m, according to two people previously involved in the project.

Instead, JLR will make its main Solihull plant the centre of its electric vehicle efforts and the revival of the Jaguar brand.

The Castle Bromwich plant will continue to make the little-selling Jaguar saloon cars and sports cars for the rest of their current life, Bolloré said. The company will explore options including moving some vehicle customisation services into the site.

Analyst Ian Henry, who runs data and forecasting group AutoAnalysis, said the strategy brings welcome “coherence and efficiency” to the company.

“While there are still questions about how much they make in each plant, the move to prioritise profitability over volume is eminently sensible.”

He added the company is “not necessarily late” in crafting an all-electric strategy. “Everybody is still putting strategies together for the electric transition.” 

JLR’s British plants made 243,000 cars last year across the three sites, fewer than Nissan produced from its single Sunderland facility. 3 x FL1 2 manual + 1 auto
5 x FL2 4 manual + 1 auto
Now Discovery Sport P250 MHEV SE

At least it seems the smaller 'transverse engined' Land Rovers are safe.

Under the Reimagine plan outlined by Bolloré, the main Solihull facility will build cars on Land Rover’s new flexible multi-powertrain MLA platform and the new Jaguar-only EV architecture.

Halewood, currently used to produce the Land Rover Discovery Sport and Range Rover Evoque, will be home to models built on the "electric-biased" EMA architecture.

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industr...ories-open

At first, when the the rumours that a major announcement from JLR was imminent started a couple of weeks ago, I thought that we would hear that BMW might have bought Land Rover for it's 4 wheel brand, leaving Jaguar to be incorporated with it's electric brand. I wonder if I may still be right?

JLR Press Release

Jaguar Land Rover and BMW Group today confirmed they are joining forces to develop next generation Electric Drive Units (EDUs) in a move that will support the advancement of electrification technologies, a central part of the automotive industry’s transition to an ACES (Autonomous, Connected, Electric, Shared) future.

https://media.jaguarlandrover.com/news/201...%20future. FL2 XS SD4 Auto 2010 2012-2017 (21k - 91k miles) (MY2011)
FL2 Metropolis SD4 Auto 2014 2017- (16k - 77k+ miles) (MY2015)
Metro in its 11th Year of (Extended) LR Warranty / Full LR Service History
(Expensive, but Trouble/Worry free - hopefully?)

Should cut oil leaks a bit then, and the crap placed oil filter . but I am thinking they will still be voltage sensitive .  2009 FL2 S now gone
2011 FL2 HSE AUTO
2012 FL2 XS AUTO
2000 Kawasaki er 5

I think it's a good move for JLR. They need to move with the times, although I suspect they'll be even more expensive in future.
The off road ability of a full EV should be awesome though, especially if they adopt hub motors. Imagine no drive train components to limit axle articulation, no rear diffs or PTUs to fail, and no vibration to damage wires and connections. Hyundai Ioniq 5 Ultimate. The family car.
2009 Rimini Red SE TD4. Gone.
2006 Tonga Green i6 HSE. Gone.
Audi A5 convertible, my daily driver.
1972 Hillman Avenger GT, the project.

The purists will be highly offended. MY11 SD4 SE Auto

Pretty sure the bigger LR vehicles will be Hydrogen powered, but not for a while (Hybrids in between).....the batteries for a long range LR EV would be sooooo heavy, although I can see a smaller LR (think school run kerb climbers) going pure EV. Regards

David

Lovely i6 has now gone, but not me......

Please let me know if anything in my post offends you, as I may wish to offend you again......

i cannot see how we can ever go completely electric . How will people in their flats charge them up ; how will people in terrace houses (who cannot park outside their own home) charge them up

In our 10 year maintenance plan we have budgeted for a EV charging station for the residents who don't have a garage. We have a visitors car parking space which can be adapted.

We have 3 phase in our building. Us garage owners have already installed 3 phase in our garages, so we are ready.

Germany are installing a charging station in all of their 14,000 petrol stations. https://www.autoblog.com/2020/06/04/german...-stations/

Shopping centres here have some charging stations. Procrastination, mankind's greatest labour saving device!

Acoustic insulation ARB TPMS 3xARB air compressors After cooler Air tank On-board OCD pressure air/water cleaning Additional 50L fuel Carpet in doors ABE 2x1kg Waeco 28L modified fridge Battery 4x26ah Solar 120w Victron MPPT 100/20 DC-DC 18amps 175amp jumper plug Awning 6x255/60R18

john doddy wrote:

i cannot see how we can ever go completely electric . How will people in their flats charge them up ; how will people in terrace houses (who cannot park outside their own home) charge them up

Boxbrownie wrote:

Pretty sure the bigger LR vehicles will be Hydrogen powered, but not for a while (Hybrids in between).....the batteries for a long range LR EV would be sooooo heavy, although I can see a smaller LR (think school run kerb climbers) going pure EV.

It seems that hydrogen is the preferred practical fuel for any long range transport.

Changing it back into electrical power is not the problem, getting it into a form that allows a good density of energy is.

I have tried to understand this article which concludes

5. Conclusion

The depletion of petroleum and the concerns of climate change, national energy security, and
wealth transfer are driving the world to seek alternative transportation fuel sources and increase energy utilization efficiency.

Due to special requirements for the transport sector, such as high power-to weight ratio for engines, high energy storage density [2,3,36], the International Energy Agency, along with numerous experts, predicts that hydrogen fuel cell powertrain systems will become dominant, more acceptable than electric vehicles, in the future [112,113].

The use of renewable carbohydrate as a hydrogen storage carrier not only solves low-cost sustainable hydrogen production challenge but also address the challenges associated with storage, safety, distribution, and infrastructure in the future
hydrogen economy [2,3,40].
International collaborative research is urgently needed to remove the remaining technical obstacles to a new carbon-neutral carbohydrate economy.

Synthesis of Carbohydrates from Carbon Dioxide and Hydrogen in a Cell-Free System

https://www.nature.com/articles/175249a0

Not sure, but it may be saying that we will need a tank of little bugs in our back gardens to go with the solar electrical and heating panels.

Also looking at what some of these 'private company' charging points cost, and the lack of any real progress in installing these in the numbers needed, I feel we need a 'government run' national infrastructure of charging points, together with a realistic plan to build enough power stations to cope in all weathers, and at all times of the year.

If you want an example of if you leave it to 'the market' to do this, just look at Texas in cold weather.
Today nearly everything is powered by electricity, so if it gets scarce, for whatever reason, then I think electric car chargers may find themselves cut off long before, domestic heating, water supplies, etc. FL2 XS SD4 Auto 2010 2012-2017 (21k - 91k miles) (MY2011)
FL2 Metropolis SD4 Auto 2014 2017- (16k - 77k+ miles) (MY2015)
Metro in its 11th Year of (Extended) LR Warranty / Full LR Service History
(Expensive, but Trouble/Worry free - hopefully?)

The Governor of Texas did the same as happened in South Australia a few years ago.

South Australia has a State wide blackout. The government because of vested interests blamed renewables. What actually happened is that 23 high tension towers were blown over in a storm. The towers were build for the coal fired power stations & the government had not spent any money on backup feeder systems.

In Texas 2/3 of their shortage of power was caused by nuclear reactor's cooling system freezing & failing coal fired power stations.


Also a bit like in France many years ago with their heatwave & 20,000 dead. The nuclear reactors were shut down because they could not cope with the heat. Procrastination, mankind's greatest labour saving device!

Acoustic insulation ARB TPMS 3xARB air compressors After cooler Air tank On-board OCD pressure air/water cleaning Additional 50L fuel Carpet in doors ABE 2x1kg Waeco 28L modified fridge Battery 4x26ah Solar 120w Victron MPPT 100/20 DC-DC 18amps 175amp jumper plug Awning 6x255/60R18

jules wrote:

Also fuels consumption rockets as soon as you go off-road.

and, clearly, also when driving on non-tarmac roads  Jules

JLR to reduce the number of vehicles produced and in the future produce high profit expensive luxury cars.

"Jaguar Land Rover will aim to make more money out of high-end vehicles like the Range Rover, which are more profitable, and move the Jaguar brand upmarket with higher-priced cars but less of them produced."

https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/cov...n-19957507

But for that to be successful they need to do something about their poor quality first ...

"Jaguar Land Rover CEO Says Company Loses Over 100,000 Sales Each Year Over Poor Quality Reputation"

https://www.thedrive.com/news/39590/jaguar...reputation Jules