Yahoo Autos Jaguar Is Going Electric, but Isn’t Giving up on Performance
A month ago Jaguar announced it is scrapping its existing model range and will only build EVs.
It said the move will happen as soon as 2025.
But there’s good news: JLR’s Special Vehicle Operations boss tells us that high-performance models will still be offered.
Jaguar’s announcement last month that it will have scrapped its existing model range as soon as 2025, and will only build EVs from that point forwards, created plenty of questions. But a recent conversation with Dutchman Michael van der Sande, head of JLR’s Special Vehicle Operations division, has confirmed that high-performance models will remain part of the brand’s future.
The news of Jaguar’s electrified near-future preceded the launch of the revised F-Pace SVR, which looks set to be the last Jaguar launched with a V8 engine. Something that created a strange PR juxtaposition of old versus new, but one that van der Sande tells Autoweek reflects market demand. “We looked at use of a hybridized powerplant [for the SVR],” he admits, “but we want to be at the top of the game and make a car that’s right for the segment.”
JLR’s decision to stick with the supercharged 5.0-liter V8 was an expensive one. The Ford-owned factory that built it in Wales closed last year, and the engine was expected to die then – with JLR expected to replace it with BMW’s 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8. But the 5.0 liter was saved instead, with production moving to JLR’s engine plant in Wolverhampton.
“We took it in house because there is need for it in the market,” van der Sande tells us, “the segments we operate in are dominated by four and five liter combustion engines – at least for the time being. Yes we are going to switch to hybridization and electrification, but we’ll continue [with the V8] for some time yet, the end point hasn’t been decided.”
The V8 will serve alongside both hybridized and full electric powertrains on the Land Rover side of SVO’s portfolio – the division working with both brands. van der Sande acknowledges that will create more complication in future, especially engineering cars that will work in parts of the world with different and often contradictory emissions standards.
“We have to have different solutions for different car lines, but also different markets,” he says, “one area where we are different already is that we don’t try to make a pure performance version of everything we do, we look at the underlying model and say ‘what is the character of that and how can we amplify it?’ So an F-Pace SVR is very different in character to a Range Rover LWB SV Autobiography.
So we might well end up with different hybrid solutions in different cases, but we are absolutely looking at the high performance side and not just cutting emissions.”
One thing that might well change is the use of SVR branding on future performance EVs.
“I can confirm we are working on SVO iterations of future Jaguars,” van der Sande says, “it is too early to talk about branding – no decision has been made on what to call what in that electric future. But they will be Jaguars and they will be delivered by our division.”
