Electric Jag sedan, Range Rover expected this fall
Other JLR models unaffected
While we had been expecting an all-electric Jaguar XJ flagship sedan to be arriving anytime now, a new report says that it will be delayed, at least by a few months, as a result of pandemic spending cuts. The same report says that an electric Range Rover is also confirmed and has been similarly delayed, but should be revealed this year.
The news comes from a transcript of a Jaguar Land Rover investors call, reports Autocar. On the call, JLR CFO Adrian Mardell said that instead of a planned reveal in August for one and September for the other, the new models will drop in October and November.
Delays are due to reduced spending during the sales plummet and uncertainty that has been the COVID-19 pandemic so far for automakers. JLR said that its total investment plan for future models is £3 billion (CAD 5.1b), down £1b (CAD 1.7b) from the figure previously announced. The report says Madell called this “more the kind of level going forward,” hinting that fewer variants of models could be coming to help save money. The CFO also said that JLR was re-working its business to be profitable on volumes just under 500,000 per year, a figure slightly lower than current sales.
Both the XJ and electric Rangie are set to be built on the company’s all-new MLA architecture, with little else known about the Range Rover EV. Work on the next-gen conventional Range Rover and Range Rover Sport (both on that same MLA platform) wasn’t paused, and that the Defender 90 wasn’t hindered by delays.
