British carmaker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) says its Jaguar luxury brand will be fully electric by 2025. Meanwhile, its Land Rover brand will release its first all-electric vehicle in 2024, the first of six fully electric models planned to be released over the next five years. The transition from JLR is funded by an investment of £ 2.5 billion (approximately $ 3.5 billion) per year in electrification and related technologies, Bloomberg reports.
JLR’s plans are ambitious, but the carmaker has previously been reluctant to accept electrification. It’s so far only the fully electric car, the Jaguar I-Pace SUV, that Bloomberg notes struggled to make intruders against more established electric car manufacturers. Even then, the car is built by a contractor, rather than being manufactured by JLR internally. The company had to pay a fine of £ 35 million (about $ 48.7 million) in the EU last year for missing emissions targets.
The advantage that JLR has is that Jaguar is still a first class car brand, which makes it possible to charge the high prices needed to cover the cost of modern batteries. It is also planned to share more technology with parent company Tata Motors to reduce development costs.
If all goes according to plan, JLR expects all Jaguars and 60 per cent of the sold Land Rovers to be no emissions by 2030, the year its home market the UK will ban the sale of new internal combustion engines. JLR hopes to reach net carbon emissions by 2039. Prohibition of vehicles with internal combustion engines has been announced with different targets around the world, such as in Norway by 2025, France by 2040 and California by 2035.