We’re getting closer to Jaguar rolling out its ambitious electric reinvention plan, with the first car set for a debut in 2025. It’s certainly no small task the brand has ahead of it and, even though parent company JLR has just posted its biggest profit since 2015, it’s not wasting any time in financially preparing itself.
Following confirmation that the F-Type sports car and XE and XF saloons would be ending production this summer, it seemed that Jag would temporarily become an EV-only brand until the launch of the first of its new generation of EVs, set to be a Porsche Taycan-rivalling ‘four-door GT’.
Jaguar I-Pace
According to Automotive News Europe, though, the company is now set to trim the fat even further, as the compact E-Pace and electric I-Pace crossovers are set to join the saloons and sports cars in being shuffled out of production.
It’ll leave Jaguar selling just one model for a time: the larger of its two combustion crossovers, the F-Pace. That car itself isn’t long for this world, with a 90th Anniversary Edition recently launched to take it into its final model year.
Jaguar E-Pace
The news came at a Jaguar investor day, where CEO Adrian Mardell said, quite matter-of-factly: “We are eliminating five products, all lower value. None of those are vehicles on which we made any money, so we are replacing them with new vehicles on newly designed architectures.” No specific end of production has been given for the two cars, and at the time of writing both are still available to build and order on Jaguar’s UK website.
Mardell told investors that most of JLR’s profitability comes from three models in its Land Rover portfolio – the Range Rover, Range Rover Sport and Defender, which he said account for 85 per cent of the company’s ‘value’ (although by what measurement wasn’t clear).
Jaguar F-Pace – rear
Jag’s electric push also looks set to see it adopt a model that focuses less on volume and more on more upmarket, higher-profit models. Following the four-door GT, a large SUV and more traditional saloon look set to join the company’s EV offerings in the latter half of the decade.
It’s unclear how the discontinuation of the E-Pace and I-Pace will impact the Magna-Steyr plant in Austria where they’re built. The factory has just laid off 500 workers off the back of the halt in Fisker Ocean production, and is also contending with the indefinite delay of the Ineos Fusilier, which was set to be built there.
