Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), which is owned by India’s Tata Motors, plans to invest 15 billion pounds ($19 billion) in electric vehicles (EVs) over the next five years.
On Wednesday, the British luxury carmaker pledged to release a new electric Jaguar by 2025 in an attempt to catch up with its rivals.
In 2021, Jaguar Land Rover announced that Jaguar would become entirely electric by 2025, but the auto company could not confirm when it would stop producing fossil-fuel models. Previously, the carmaker committed to spending 2.5 billion pounds annually on electrification.
As pressure mounts on automakers to transition to EVs, particularly in China where competitors are moving quickly and cutting prices, JLR’s premium German rivals, BMW and Mercedes, have already unveiled a range of electric models. By the end of the year, BMW has promised to release 11 new EV models in China alone. JLR launched the well-received electric I-Pace in 2018 but has not released any other zero-emission models since then.
Jaguar Land Rover plans to convert its Halewood plant in northwest England into an all-electric manufacturing facility. Furthermore, Jaguar Land Rover intends to introduce a new all-electric Range Rover SUV in 2025, with order books for the vehicle opening later this year. The new electric Jaguar will be the first of three new electric models and will be produced at JLR’s Solihull plant in central England.
In January, Jaguar Land Rover reported a quarterly profit, but the pandemic and the semiconductor chip shortage have affected it more severely than other major automakers, as larger rivals have more influence over suppliers.
In the fiscal year ending March 31 last year, Jaguar Land Rover sold 376,381 units, 39 percent lower than its fiscal 2018 year, which was the last year it reported a full-year profit.
Jaguar Land Rover also announced that it aims to achieve a double-digit margin for earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) by 2026. Its last quarterly EBIT margin, a critical measure of profitability, was 3.7 percent.
Reuters reported that Tata, JLR’s parent company, is considering constructing an EV battery plant in Spain or the United Kingdom to supply the automaker.