Where did Jaguar started screwing up in producet development?

It's a complicated story, but I think Jaguar was on a roll until 2015. It went downhill with the botched development of Jaguar XE, second-gen XF (X260), E-Pace, and lastly I-Pace. The F-Pace was actually a successful product, but what Jaguar should have focused is replacing the aging XJ with an ICE V8-based new XJ with hybrid or EV compatibility in its chassis. It should have never developed the XE (a 3-series competitor) and cheapen the engine and interior quality of the XF in its second generation.

Furthermore, E-Pace, in my opinion, is Ian Callum's career failure moment. The compact luxury SUV market should have been plenty hot circa 2016, but the boring exterior design, cheap-feeling interior, and the powertrain choices for the E-Pace were forgettable and weak.

I think Ian Callum started running out of ideas by the time he was the chief designer for the second-gen XF (X250), the XE, and the E-Pace. His designs were no longer fresh in the industry, lacked the "wow" factor, and was feeling "same old" and boring, much like the boring evolution of the Audi exterior and interior designs in the last decade.

I'd say that Ian Callum had to go, and I doubt the now-cancelled electric XJ's design would have been good enough in the market either, considering Ian Callum running out of fresh design ideas. It remains whether Jerry McGovern can pull some rabbits out of a hat in terms of design "wow" factor. Commercially, McGovern has been far more successful with the new Range Rover and the Defender than Ian Callum ever has in his disappointing finish at JLR.

 

I think the concept of having so few dealers that a majority of your possible customers need to drive half a day to get service is failure.
The majority of customers willing to drop big bucks also want access to service.
So apart from the ICE vs EV issue, IMO Jaguar has substantially limited its customer base by cutting back its dealer network.
I do not see Jag EV's commanding such a demand that customers will pay the earth with such limited access.

 

In the last 5-6 years JLR have made numerous announcements about their future as well as forcing main dealers to adopt the "ARCH", combine or add the other brand if they didn't have and replace and build new facilities at massive costs, only to announce Jaguar would be removed from JLR and move to a manufacturer direct sales model. They also initially announced the "death" of petrol engines by 2025 only to announce a new partnership the BMW for new V8TT engines to replace the aging AJ Ford series for the foreseeable future...

As for electric, I've been in the enthusiast community for years and most enthusiast friends have a severe distaste for anything electric powered and are quite passionate with those sentiments. Whilst EV tech's far too early on for me to consider adopting it any time soon, I'm not opposed to alternative power sources, what matters most for me's the design and driving experience, not the smell of exhaust or the noise (though the smells and noises of race tracks do make one tingle with excitement).

 

When they fired Thierry Bolloré, Adrian Mardell should have corrected the course for the Jaguar brand by keeping the ICE platforms alive and only progressively moving into EV territory. It's too late so say "should have" or "could have" at this point, so let's see what the electric GT looks like in the next few months.

Jaguar has been super quiet about it, so I'm curious.

 

If Jaguar wants to have any chance to succeed as an EV-only luxury brand, it should give a crazy-good eyepopping warranty (e.g. a transferable 10-year battery and powertrain warranty, 7-year bumper-to-bumper etc.) in major markets, taking a page out of Hyundai / Kia playbook in the US.

 

In the world of boutique makes, service comes to you--you don't go to it. At the price point they want to play in, customers expect a loaner to show up at their house on a ramp truck and the ramp truck takes their vehicle back for as long as necessary for service/repairs. Then their car shows up all serviced/repaired at the owner's convenience the swap is made. Dropping the dealer count makes it (allegedly) that much more bespoke and JLR can focus on the customer experience at a lot fewer locations, which means they can spend more at each (or make the franchise dealer owners spend more).

 

Jaguars are cars with soul! EV cars have no soul! They are fast transportation, I’m ok with EV fulfilling a niche msrket. But, all in on EVs is just stupid.

Everytime I start my XKR, it brings a chill down my spine. When my neighbor backs his Tesla out of the garage, and it sounds like my wife’s vacuum cleaner I smile at him.

I believe the major issues with going ev are:
- manufacturers’ focus on high performance rather than range
- high purchase prices compared to equivalent ICE
- inevitable high cost of battery replacement
- time to charge
- charge station access for those without a single family home

 

AJ series is Jaguar, not Ford. A mistake commonly made.

 

They need to bring out a "G"-type with AJ133 V8 that is turbocharged and electrically supercharged together, possibly with a 48 V mild hybrid setup.

Alternatively, they can do what Porsche is doing with the T-hybrid in 992.2 GTS. The question is whether the Jaguar's mediocre management has the vision and the budget to make that happen.

I am not too optimistic, but there is still a unique and evocative brand value in Jaguar that Saab, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Saturn simply did not have.

 

mmmm not quite, Ford owned JLR when the engine was first used in JLR and Ford vehicles AND manufactured the engines in their Bridgend engine factory until just a couple of years ago.

 

Seeing as Ford ceased manufacturing AJ engines several years ago and JLR switched to BMW V8TT engines last year that wouldn't be possible.

 

You're absolutely correct, but y'know what IS available today? The same ICE vehicles everyone's terrified of losing. The EV tech sucks right now (although it's really the infrastructure that sucks right now, the tech is improving fast).... iPhones also sucked in 2007 but within 5 or 6 iterations hollywood was using them to film movie scenes.

I've said this in EV-whinge threads at least a few times - y'all are judging the future of an emerging technology based on its performance today which is short-sighted. In the past three months or so at least two new brands offering hypercar-style EVs have been born and their offerings (or projected offerings) are leaps and bounds ahead of what was available literally a few months ago. The industry is moving INSANELY fast and, if I can smoke a blunt and sketch a basic technical design for an in-ground induction loop charging system that automatically tops up EVs while they stop at traffic lights (sourcing its power from solar panels built into the road itself) then you can bet someone who's high up inthe EV industry has also thought of it. The primary challenge for someone trying to implement a system like that is setting a standard across the industry.

The biggest problem for one of these new EV hypercar brands is that no self-respecting anti-china American would be caught dead in a car called a YANGWANG 😂 😂 😂

One of Tesla's high-level goals was to bring the cost of EVs down by mass production, they were never supposed to be a hypercar brand. They were supposed to make the Corollas of EVs in huge numbers so that the technology got cheaper and the industry could move forward, and they have succeeded in that goal. Their patents are open-source and free to use, so anyone can start an EV company and use the technology they've created without fees or anything. They are the reason you can buy an 18650 lithium battery on eBay for 50 cents.

I get it that owners of Jags feel "let down" by the company's decision to move to all-EV. If my barber decided to only cut women's hair, I'd probably be a bit annoyed too.... but I wouldn't sit on forums all day complaining about it and posting links to news articles about rumours of lawsuits, I'd just find another barber 🤷 For those of us whose feelings are so deeply hurt by Jaguar's decision to try out a new technology, there are plenty of other companies who will continue to make ICE vehicles for quite a few years to come.

I actively worked on my language here following DMeister's feedback so I do hope this post wasn't too "aggressive" 🙄

 

Actually, JLR brought AJ133 manufacturing in house in a few years ago.

The last 3 years of AJ133 engines have been in-house manufacturing in JLR engine plants.

 

Well, the AJ8 engine design itself (all three generations of it) is Jaguar's from Jaguar engineers, and it was simply built by Ford UK engine plants for a long time because that was more cost effective to do so, from engine manufacturing perspective.

Ford "borrowed" second generation AJ8 engine design from Jaguar and used it in Ford's Lincoln LS and Thunderbird in the early 2000s. That's the only time when Ford vehicles took Jaguar's native V8 engine design in their cars.

An additional point of interest: most of Aston Martins previous V8s were Jaguar AJ8s (second gen), with some displacement and piston head modifications made by Aston Martin until Aston Martin started using M177 engine from MB. Aston Martin's previous V8 came from Jaguar's design, not from Ford's native V8 ("American") designs.

 

I guess I would just correct one thing, that lawsuit is not a rumour.

 

There’s coverage on this lawsuit in a number of places…This one even spells out the amounts they are seeking etc…I guess this is just one dealer involved..

https://canada.autonews.com/retail/s...group-sues-jlr

 

Even the Aussies are covering it ;-0

https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-new...ver-ev-rebirth

 

The big oil companies must be paying plenty to the media, over the past 12 months Australian news about EVs has gone from wildly positive "you gotta have one" to overwhelmingly negative "**** has dropped out of the market" "unsaleable second hand" today we had "stopped dead on the freeway" "dangerous", "overstocked", "prices falling" and so on, that fed into the Jag dealer article getting a mention when it wouldnt usually raise an eyebrow over here.

Obviously the truth about EVs is probably somewhere between the two polar positions, but ultimately it doesnt matter if people are being convinced (rightly or wrongly) that they are going to be stuck forever with an unsaleable car particularly given that we pay a lot more for them over here than you do.

 

Two of the articles you posted disagree:

Quote:

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) dealers in Canada are reportedly gearing up for joint legal action in response to the company’s move to an electric-only lineup for the Jaguar brand.

The second article that claims the suit is filed and states the amount being sought is behind a paywall, so I can't read it.

All of this is pretty arbitrary though... legal action is just how we find the edges of laws and contracts, it doesn't really mean much. One of two things will happen - the suit won't go anywhere and was just a publicity stunt to try and get Jag to go back to ICE... or Jag will settle out of court, compensate the dealers, and recover the compensation cost through the margin on their EVs. If they have breached their contracts with this decision, I'd honestly be surprised if they hadn't already factored this into the pricing. This is fairly standard practice in business... there's a great story about how the founder of Uber was being fined $100k per day by NYC for running "illegal taxis," but the business was so profitable that it didn't matter. Every time there's an oil spill, you pay for the cleanup and fines through pump prices. It's how it works 🤷

 

Thats part of the problem with EVs. The people pushing for full adoption of EVs, are science challenged. And believe statements like your’s that are impossibilities. Heck, take California as an example, we don’t have enough power capacity when it gets hot and they have to have forced brown outs. As well, if it’s windy, they have to shut down entire grids. We simply don’t have enough power generation capacity to power the state as is, and we are going to rapidly move all fossil fuel useage to electricity ?

Are they going to install point of use nuclear reactors to provide all the power needed for charging all the vehicles in a 200 house neighborhood like I live in? You can’t have an array of 20 fast charge stations stations, along a freeway, without a nuclear reactor powering them. Ask anyone that has driven a Tesla from LA to San Francisco.