(Paris) Jaguar wants to convince younger and richer customers than its current customers to go to the battery car, while luxury brands hesitate in front of the electric shift.
The brand of the British group Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) presented to the European press on Friday in Paris, a very low prototype, in the massive lines and in the very long hood.
This Jaguar Type 00 foreshadows an expected electric sedan in mid-2010 at a basic rate of around 150,000 euros ($ 233,000), double the brand's current models.
“We must be exuberant, modern,” said the brand director on Friday, the British Rawdon Glover.
Jaguar's turn is not to everyone's taste: the first clip announcing its new identity, with its pink tones and models of all ages and all origins, aroused mockery and sometimes violent criticisms and criticism.
Three other battery models are planned on this same line: Jaguar is reborn in a 100 % electric version, while Range Rover SUVs will continue to be sold in a hybrid, petrol or diesel version.
Shake the market
Photo Thomas Samson, Agency France-Presse
The Jaguar Type 00 has a very low prototype, in the massive lines and in the very long hood.
With its huge wheels and massive grille, terrible for the aerodynamics of the car, the type 00 displays a design “far from the stereotypes of the electric car”, underlines Rawdon Glover.
The series model promises 700 kilometers of 100 % electric autonomy and versions of a power of 1000 horsepower, which imply the use of heavy batteries of which Jaguar has not given detail.
Known for its statutory sedans and sports coupes, the brand had an aging range and its sales fell, at 59,000 units in 2024: its owner, the Indian conglomerate Tata, decided to put the feline at rest to prepare its electrification. The historic factory of Castle Bromwich, near Birmingham (center of England), arrested its production in May 2024.
Near the place of the Jaguar conference, Friday on the prestigious Place Vendôme, the Ballet des Mercedes Noires around a Rolls-Royce SUV (with petrol) tended to show that the electric must still convince.
For the British analyst Danni Hewson, of the investment platform AJ Bell, “Jaguar wants to shake up the market and its basin of buyers, targeting easier motorists who could have in the past opt for Porsche or Bentley”.
The brand “attracted looks and […] When the first of its new models will release production channels, its strategy will be studied and potentially copied in the years to come. ”
Aston Martin, Bentley, Maserati and other luxury car brands have gradually pushed their transition to electric motor cars, faced with the polite interest of their wealthy buyers.
Range Rover, Jaguar's cousin brand, has itself delayed the outlet of the electric version of its SUV.
Jaguar wants to keep part of its current customers, but also reaching an “younger, younger public” of car buyers, between 35 and 50 years old, underlined Mr. Glover.
“20 years ago, luxury vehicles were very largely the domain of men in his fifties, because it was from this moment that they acquired them […] This world has changed […] Today wealth arrives much earlier in people's lives, ”analyzes the boss of Jaguar.
It is also a question of convincing China, a market fond of electric cars, where the JLR group fell back like Mercedes or Audi for the benefit of local brands.
