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Jaguar Land Rover is flexing its engineering muscles with the start of production of its latest Ingenium 2.0-litre petrol engines and the announcement of a new high-tech gearbox.
We've had a chance to become familiar with the Ingenium diesel units, and now their petrol brothers, all based on the same 500cc cylinder design, are starting production in the Wolverhampton factory. These units will allow Jaguar and Land Rover to wean themselves off the old 2.0-litre turbo Ford unit currently in use.
The Ingenium engines, which will go on sale in models such as the Jaguar XE and F-Pace and the Range Rover Evoque and Land Rover Discovery Sport, will go on sale in 2017 and incorporate technology such as a twin-scroll turbocharger and ceramic ball bearing technology.
Nick Rogers, Group Engineering Director, said: "Ingenium has been developed as a modular family of powerful, efficient and refined all-aluminium petrol and diesel engines. All Ingenium engines deliver benchmark low levels of friction, contributing to inherently good efficiency and refinement."
Jaguar Land Rover is also looking to the future, announcing the new Transcend gearbox, which is currently an advanced engineering project, but which Jaguar Land Rover hopes will soon go into production. Since the early 2000s, both Jaguar and Land Rover have primarily used bought-in ZF transmissions, so Transcend is an opportunity to bring all production in-house.
It's designed to be an eight-speed automatic, which can incorporate low-ratio transfer for off-roading and has been designed from the start to accept a hybrid electric module. Nick Rogers said: "Transcend demonstrates Jaguar Land Rover's commitment to original research that improves the driving experience and the environmental performance of our vehicles. It will make manoeuvring and off-road use easier than ever before for drivers whilst also improving on-road vehicle dynamics and CO2 emissions. Environmental innovation is at the heart of our strategy to dramatically reduce emissions up to 2020 and beyond. With the Ingenium family of powertrains and advanced research projects such as Transcend, future Jaguar Land Rover vehicles will emit significantly less CO₂. By 2020, new technologies will help us reduce our CO₂emissions by a further 25 per cent."