Land Rover could win at electrification

Land Rover’s plan to restore sales and fiscal health over the next few years – and set itself on the right low-carbon road – sounds plausible, given how much it achieved in the Tata-owned decade just ended.

It scored bumper sales in many of those years, changed promptly to engines of its own manufacture and is finding ways to counter the demise of diesel.

But big challenges loom. The company has just made more than 4500 people redundant and a big proportion of these were technical experts. Who’s creating the all-new electrified solutions that will be needed at a higher level than ever? Did the departing engineers finish all their work before they turned out the lights?

Land Rover’s other major challenge looks to be build quality. The company has never truly lifted itself out of the quality doldrums. On top of that, it faces a new era of technical complexity. Will new customers keep forgiving unreliability the way loyal customers always have?

Rumours persist that big corporate suitors see JLR as a prime acquisition target and, as the height of the company’s future obstacle emerges, it’s hard to resist the truth of that.

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Steve Cropley

Title: Editor-in-chief

Steve Cropley is the oldest of Autocar’s editorial team, or the most experienced if you want to be polite about it. He joined over 30 years ago, and has driven many cars and interviewed many people in half a century in the business.

Cropley, who regards himself as the magazine’s “long stop”, has seen many changes since Autocar was a print-only affair, but claims that in such a fast moving environment he has little appetite for looking back.

He has been surprised and delighted by the generous reception afforded the My Week In Cars podcast he makes with long suffering colleague Matt Prior, and calls it the most enjoyable part of his working week.

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Eliza george 22 May 2019

Great

In one feel, electrification offers a big opportunity for JLR because of the excellent manage, monster torque and silence of electrical vehicles manner that electric powered Range Rovers must be higher the ICE ones. The danger is that the marketplace for ICE or PHEV automobiles in 10 years is probably near 0, and JLR has batteries to relaxed, weight to lose and aerodynamics to gain earlier than being a serious player.

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deanm1964 20 May 2019

JLR and electrification

I’m really confused by this article, because the content doesn’t do anything to justify or evidence the claim of the headline.

lamcote 16 May 2019

Wow

That was well worth reading wasn't it!!! Not a single piece of evidence or even information in this article is given to support the title's proposition. You could substitute any manufacturer's name for Jaguar in this. How do you have the cheek to write this stuff and get paid for it????? I haven't bought your rag for years as a result of this kind of contribution, and my ad blocker is working nicely too!