On a recent scorcher of a day, bottles of water in the glove box and we thought they will be nice and cool in there! Reality was they were not and no air coming out of the vent in the top right hand corner of the glovebox. The handbook says the flow of air and temperature can be regulated by twisting the control on said vent, Wrong...it is just a plain vent with no way of varying it. So further investigation by taking out the glovebox...no pipe attached to vent nor any sign of where a pipe might lead from on the ventilation system. Puzzled?

 

Mifght be a good idea to tell us what car you have, year and model. This is the XE forum.

 

It is of course an XE ............2016 Portfolio 2.0d 180 auto.

 

Well, I'm even more puzzled now, because the vents in the centre of my dash both have little vertical wheels each side that you turn to vary the airflow or turn it off, and the outer vents near the doors have the same control. Clearly an error of handbook writing. I sometimes wonder if the authors ever sit in the car they're describing !
The vent controls work on my car and I've just been out to look. However, I'm not aware of any glovebox cooling option, I have none on my Portfolio. The lack of pipe connections at the rear is probably because it is a plenum chamber, and the vents are the exits to the cabin.

 

Here is the layout of the air distribution for the climate control: -
https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...xzh22uqwLAFKrw
As you'll see, it is one big vent with no traditional pipes.

 

Got to apologise and eat some humble pie, what I thought was an online page for the XE was actually for an XF which apparently does have the cool glovebox facility. In my defence (yer honour!) the fact that there is a vent in the back right hand corner suggested there should be cool air coming in.
However thank you for your input,, the diagrams were of considerable help

 

I suspect that the glovebox is a generic moulding used for both the XE and the XF, hence the vent. Since this exists it seems a pity that JLR's bean counters eliminated the cooled glovebox on the XE - this can't really save much money but even a few pence saving per car seems to be the aim of the accountants.
Cooled gloveboxes are really handy - I've also had a car with a cooled centre cubby - I miss both on the XE

 

Yes, this does indeed seem the height of meanness and maybe explains why the XE didn't really succeed in the market place. Certainly the first ones were very penny-pinching inside, with no cover over the cup holder and a general feel of downmarket. Maybe the BMW 3 series is similar, but frankly, Jaguar needs to up its game. If the current XE had been the one put on sale in 2015, Jaguar would be in a lot better position.
I drove the latest XE last week, with the new gearshift lever instead of the rotating knob, and it is very nice. whether it has a cooled glove box is another matter !!

 

I sort of suspect that costs would have part of the equation, I am hoping to have a look at an XF some time and see how that cool air is `plumbed in`.

Also see if the later XE`s do have cool air to the `cubby hole?` Anyone got an EPC to check?

 

I can’t understand what they’ve been doing for the last ten years. They develop these excellent cars that are aimed squarely at the competition and which are objectively better in many respects. But before they have time to make any headway, the money people get involved and immediately start cutting back so the product is no longer competitive. The XE was supposed to go against the 3 series. They had the 20d (320d competitor), the 25t (328i competitor), and the 35t (340i competitor). There was supposed to be an M3 competitor, but it got replaced with the SVR 8 thing that was kind of a one-off. Then they almost immediately dropped the V6 option from the XE so the was 35t no longer competitive with the 340i in any spec. The XF used to have a 540 competitor, a 550 competitor, and an M5 competitor. They pulled the V8 and eliminated the M5 competitor, then just after they pulled the V6 from the XE, they yanked it from the XF so there was no more 550 competitor.

It’s like they bring out these highly competitive products and then within two years they start scaling them back until they’re not competitive anymore. They can’t increase market share if the product keeps getting taken off the market just as people start to notice it!!!