Jaguar Land Rover to ramp up EV production with £15bn investment
Jaguar Land Rover has said it will invest £15bn over five years as Britain’s largest carmaking employer upgrades its factories to produce electric vehicles, including its first car with a UK-made battery.
The company will shift production at its plant at Halewood, Merseyside, to electric cars, and its factory making internal combustion engines in Wolverhampton, in the West Midlands, will focus on producing electric propulsion technologies.
JLR, which has 36,000 employees, said the £15bn would be spread over its “industrial footprint, vehicle programmes, autonomous, AI and digital technologies and people skills”, although did not set out how the money would be split.
The investment will be welcomed by the UK car industry. Although it is owned by the Indian conglomerate Tata, JLR is the sole mass-market carmaker headquartered in Britain, and only Japan’s Nissan made more cars in UK factories in 2022.
However, analysts have long been waiting for information on how JLR would meet its existing commitments to make Jaguar an all-electric brand by 2025, and to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2039.
Some experts have criticised the company for falling behind in the race to produce electric vehicles. It has also struggled more than some rivals to find enough semiconductor computer chips for its cars amid a global shortage, which has held back its output and slowed its return to profitability after years of losses.
JLR on Wednesday announced that its first UK-made electric car would be a £100,000 Jaguar four-door “grand tourer” built in Solihull in the West Midlands. The first deliveries of the car will be in 2025.
Adrian Mardell, JLR’s chief executive, said the company was “accelerating our electrification path, making one of our UK
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