Because these are in relatively rare supply and there isn't much out there in the way of buyer feedback, I thought I would offer my first impressions to anyone who might be interested in this vehicle. I happened to first step foot in an I-Pace when I was getting service on my 2010 XF. It was a few years back when the dealership happened to have its turn with one of the preview I-Pace during the introduction tour to the Jag dealers. I sheepishly asked the service manager if that was the new Jag EV on the showroom floor. He explained how they had it for a few weeks to get acquainted before the upcoming launch, and then asked if I wanted to drive it. Um, yes please. I was immediately hooked. This was the first Jag that I truly considered replacing my 2010 XF Supercharged. And that surprised me, a lot. Well fast forward to yesterday, after watching from afar and almost pulling the trigger twice, when I took delivery of my I-Pace.

Of course, as vehicles are subjective I'll offer a little background. I first fell in love with Jaguar as early as I can remember. My dad had a '63 E-Type that, sadly, did a lot of sitting in our garage. Before you cast aspersions on him, I now realize that it took a lot to keep that beauty in an operating condition and my father, even though he deeply loved that car, prioritized other things before putting money into it. Like putting roofs overhead, food on tables, education, etc. But I spent an immense amount of time in that car when I was a kid, sitting behind the wheel and pretending to be racing it around corners. I can literally recall the smell of the interior. I joyed in playing with the flip switches on the quintessential hammered metal console and at age 4 thought nothing less of Lucas. I ran the choke up and down and relished the first and only, until some 30 years later, push button start I had ever seen on a car. That dash, in great part, is what helped me fall for my XF. The 2010 interior harkened back to that E-Type, and this I-Pace for me is that next generation response.

So, on to my thoughts.

Pros

1) The regenerative braking is NO joke. I drove it home from the dealership in low mode to try it out, but just switched it into high mode for a full 20+ mile drive throughout the city of Chicago. I never touched the brakes while driving, once. In fact the only time I put my foot on the brake pedal was after I came to a stop when I detected a slight roll backward before the auto hold kicked in. I have no idea if this will add significant life to my brakes and no idea if it will really improve the battery efficiency, but in theory both would be true. I actually just like the one pedal driving. Well, at least after I got the hang of it. The first five miles and 20 or so stop lights/signs had me feeling like a 15 year old again with a manual transmission.
2) This car is going to get me in trouble. That's what I thought the first time I pushed the accelerator on my XF, and this I-Pace is no different. Except that it is, dramatically. After a little easy driving through town I punched it getting onto Lakeshore drive and a two things crossed my mind. I was going to miss the roar of my 470 HP engine and the get up and go that it provided. That was until I glanced at the HUD and realized I was blasting through 75MPH. I truly had no idea. It felt like 40. This car is smooooooooth. Last night when playing around with the infotainment system I enabled the speed limit warning option for 5MPH over. If the red flashing perimeter of the real-time speed limit sign on the display is the extent of that warning, I'm going to have to really pay attention.
3) It still feels like a car. Two things here.
3a) First, I didn't want to drive an iPad on wheels. I get that for a lot of people part of the allure of an electric vehicle is that it gives them a feeling of driving something that feels like the future. Personally, I like the idea of driving something that is forward looking, but that still provides the feels of sitting in that E-Type. This I-Pace does it for me. That said there is no shortage of display real estate, this car has four separate displays. Center console, climate panel, dash panel, and HUD. All, with the exception I believe of the climate panel, fully customizable. There's so much display space I'm trying to figure out what I want to show that won't be repetitive. Plenty of info at a glance and no iPad Pro glued to the dash.
3b) It is tight and responsive. I don't know how to describe this but it feels heavy stepping in to the car. And if you slightly apply the accelerator you can just feel the mass. Driving around the city I noticed that I was driving noticeably slower that when in my XF. Probably a good thing. But the minute you ask it to bear down and go, that all evaporates and it feels quick and responsive like I could take on a 911 in a slalom. I'm sure I can't, but it feels like I could.
4) Safety/Convenience. Lots of features here, and frankly I hope I never have to use some of them. But a special mention is the clearsight rear view mirror which was configured on my build. I thought this would be gimmicky, but this adds a huge visibility enhancement. It will take a little getting used to but turning it on and off is beyond simple. One potential drawback is the blind spot monitor on the side mirrors which seem like they might activate a little too late (i.e. when the car in the adjacent lane is too close). I learned to use this feature extensively on my XF, it would be weird to suddenly not find it dependable.
5) It's beautiful, inside and out. I know, subjective, but I'm smitten.






Too early to tell
1) Range. I will be watching this very intently as I have noted pretty much everywhere I read that the advertised range was much higher than real life. In my city tour, I noted the remaining range miles ticking down much faster than my actual mileage. A bit surprising since as I mentioned above I was doing what I believed to be a fair amount of regenerative braking. That said, my 2010 XF has 35,000 miles on it. I live in the city, and my average trip isn't vary far. So I'm probably only going to get irritated by this on my occasional road trip that I try to take.
2) Infotainment. Seems intuitive enough, but there's a lot here to digest yet. There's also a few features that don't seem to be operational yet? One feature suggested I had to enable connectivity, which when I selected to do it showed it as already enabled. Simple UX bug perhaps so not sure, maybe this is just in the too soon category. But the fact that this can all be updated OTA as they launch new features or make improvements make me feel pretty good about this. This was a MAJOR drawback of my XF.
3) No spare tire. This is odd to me. But there is an emergency flat repair/inflate kit. No idea if it works, and hope I won't have to ever try (yes, yes, wishful thinking I know). But when my sales associate was going through the features of the car and explained where the spare would go, I can't stress this enough. DO NOT purchase the spare tire option. Per him, it sits in a very nice bag, in the rear cargo area!! Huh?
4) Cargo space. Seems more than adequate, but really too early to tell.
5) App. One of the major benefits IMO of these next gen cars is the ability for remote telemetry and intelligence, communication, and functionality and the Jag app seems a little weak here perhaps. As they apparently intend to move to an all EV platform, I'm hopeful they put some significant R&D into this and lead rather than follow.

Cons
1) No wireless Apple CarPlay. This seems like an obvious oversight. Even the standard rental car I had in Europe last year had this. Hope this comes to an OTA update soon.
2) Wireless phone charging. Perhaps the protruding camera on my iPhone 12 prevents a decent connection here (No I don't have a case. Yes I have insurance) but this seems to be spotty at best. It didn't charge my phone at all and only briefly indicated it was charging. While I'm at it, getting the phone in and out of the wireless charging location is tricky. The aesthetic design element of the car is brilliant here, the practical not so much.
3) The roof shade. Straight up profit margin for Jaguar. My car already had this configured as an option. It immediately went into the bag, under the cargo shelf in the back. Where it will remain until this car leaves my side.
4) Limited auto-drive features. A few years back I occasionally drove my girlfriend's (at the time) Ford Explorer and it could park itself. I guess I would expect a little more than auto lane keeping.

Well, that's it after less than 24 hours of ownership. I'm not around the forums too much, but feel free to ask questions. I'll try to update if anything strikes me as significant as my EV journey begins.

 

Had to add this.

 

Congrats, she is a beauty! 2nd the comfort and need for speed warnings, the silent build of speed is deceiving. A true rocket ship from 20-80 mph.

I'll be curious your experience with range, so far I seem to be getting close to advertised, but may decrease now with the 22" wheels.

 

I've owned mine since Nov 2019. I also think this car is awesome. What a pleasure to drive. I will let others drive it if they want to try it, but I will not be a passenger. Too much acceleration in the hands of someone else for me to be a passenger. The center o gravity is really low, and this thing corners like a racecar. Out-accelerates any internal combustion car.

There are a few quirks ... it sometimes takes a little while for CarPlay to act properly. I can't figure out how to direct air flow solely to the windshield. I have a bike rack and when I back up the car thinks I'm about o run into something and it screams at me, which is really annoying. I had a flat and the tire repair/inflation thing worked well. But it was really hard to find replacement goop - the dealer didn't have it. But I found some. Sometimes I find the menues hard to navigate, hard to find what I'm looking for.

Has a range of over 200 mi. 250 in the Summer, less in the winter. Gets from Boston to NYC no problem.

Mine has parallel park-assist.

The app is OK - remote environmental control, charging level,lock the car, etc. Don't need much else.

Loving it.

 

More than happy to share any thoughts on our new 2022 i-Pace HSE with Black Package. Either reply or, shoot me a DM. We picked her up about 2 1/2 weeks ago after our Tesla Model Y order date kept pushing out further and further.

 

The main selling proposition with Tesla is they have their own extensive charging network and a lot of these are rapid chargers. No other EVs can access their network whereas with the I-Pace, you are at the mercy of the public network if you're going on any long trips. Obvioiusly tootling around town means you can charge at home every night

 

This is about to change Tesla planning to open its charging network to all cars: Tesla opening Supercharger network will enable access to new $7.5 billion EV funding in US - Electrek

 

Glad to hear it. I hope their UK network will be open on a similar basis. The basic problem with EVs is the range is usually OK for most use, but not all. Where a trip would get the battery low on arrival at destination, that is where the problem lies - "is there a charging station at or near my destination". For really long trips, like I take to Germany for holidays, a re-charge en-route, maybe two would be necessary. You have to have the confidence the network is there and working. Far too many charging points are at unmanned locations where faults may not be reported quickly. You turn up to charge, and the chargers are out of action. Not good.

 

Wow, non-working chargers would get old really fast. Sorry to hear that isn't sorted over there, we're still sorting just placing fast chargers here as well.