Jaguar has started to reveal a little more of its future plans, ahead of the full unveiling of a new all-electric concept car in December.
Right now, Jaguar as a brand isn’t selling any new cars - bar those which remain in stock in dealerships. Effectively, the company has cleared house ahead of the development and launch of a new family of all-electric cars. Confirmed so far are a low-slung four-door saloon-cum-coupe, a larger SUV and a sports car of some sort.
Isn’t this a bit of a gamble?
At a time when electric sales are growing around the world, but faltering in Europe, switching to an all-electric lineup is a Moon-shot risk for Jaguar, not least because it’s also going to dramatically increase the prices of its cars. Having seen, on the other side of the showroom, Range Rovers going for multiples of six-figure prices, Jaguar intends to take on the likes of Bentley with its new models, selling fewer cars but at a much higher price and profit margin.
Now, we have our first glimpse of what the new Jaguar is going to be. The first concept car will get a proper reveal in at Miami Art Week in Florida next month, but Jaguar has shown us this heavily camouflaged prototype which is now hitting the roads and test tracks of the world.
What kind of car is it?
This model is the four-door ‘electric GT’ as Jaguar calls it, and while the camouflage doesn’t give us many hints as to what lies beneath, we can see that this car seems to have a much longer nose than is normal for an EV, with a prominent grille and a sharply-sloping fastback rear end.
The early word coming from Jaguar is that these new models won’t look like classic Jaguars - the failure of Jaguar’s early 2000s retro design programme is still fresh in the mind - but will instead shock and surprise in the manner which the original XK120, E-Type and XJ saloon did when they were launched.
Talk us through the design...
That said, a long bonnet and a short rear end is a classical Jaguar proportion, so perhaps the baby isn’t quite being thrown out with the bathwater.
All of the new cars will be based on a dedicated electric architecture called JEA (Jaguar Electric Architecture), made at Jaguar’s plant at Solihull in the UK’s midlands.
We’ll get some more details on Jag’s future plans when the covers come off the new concept car in Miami in three weeks.