Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has invited start-up companies from across the UK to join its new ‘Open Innovation hub’ - aimed at integrating the next-generation of car technology into its future cars.
The car maker says it wants to build new collaborations with start-ups, scale-ups and “like-minded” external firms to develop upgrades in the areas of electrification, connectivity, digital services, the metaverse and more.
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Having worked out JLR twice as an engineer I can tell you all of this is fluff and avoiding their biggest issue which no one journalist has the balls to talk, nor do those within the company.
Want to hear it? Reliability. It's shocking. They make too many models and don't put enough time into quality. It's caused them to go bust so many times.
It's a shame as the cars, when they work are actually brilliant on the most part. As for the iPace it is a dog, full of so many engineering compromises. I would never buy any of their products. And tell everyone not to.
Until they aim for Toyota reliability they will continue to go bust every decade or so. Why does no one cross hostile land in a Land Rover? If you want to return alive you jump in a Land Cruiser.
Its a vanity product like a handbag, bought by the vain and those with too much money to care if it goes wrong, because looking fancy at the country club is worth more to them.
Good points made already but I remain convinced that Jaguar and Land Rover are being set up to join forces with another major manufacturer. My bet is BMW and the current talk to move Jaguar upmarket into Bentley territory only makes that more likely. BMW are never going to stretch their brand image to cover that market sector. Jaguar could do it for them. It already has the image of the old english cache and only needs the technical expertise in economic manufacturing consistency that BMW could provide much as Audi Porsche do for Bentley, and more effectively than BMW already do to an extent for RR. As for Land Rover, BMW already makes very effective SUVs but would struggle to get one into Range Rover territory. They have shown once they understand what is needed to produce a quality product and could easily separate their own offerings which compete further down the range by keeping their products 'urban' and allowing LR to market their go anywhere credentials in a more focused way.
As to the fluff piece about technology, to me it just shows how little JLR currently have in the kitty for the massive development program they will need to stay independent. Outsourcing it to new sources, unproven ideas and unproven manufacturing techniques without having control over the intellectual property if it works seems pretty desperate and asking for quality glitches down the road. Still, if you haven't got the cash you have to try to show you can do it anyway.
I don't give the group two years before someone pounces.
Thierry Bollore, the world's worst automotive CEO, wants to change Jaguar so that it competes with the likes of Bentley. Bentley produces a tenth, or fewer, cars than Jaguar.
Bollore also wants to instantly switch Jaguar in to a Tesla.
Is this realisitic?
I think you know that his plans will decimate Jaguar. That means about 90% of the workforce working at Jaguar will have to go.
Jaguar doesn't offer a 1-series / A class rival. It needs to. And the XE needs to offer smaller engines to compete across the board with Audi / Merc / BMW. One reason that it doesn't have similar sales is simply because it doesn't offer the same depth of product lines. It also needs a halo M / AMG / RS car. Project 8 was great, but limited. It needs a regular offering.
Jaguar also needs to walk through a hybrid period whilst introducing more EVs like the i-Pace to market. Remember that the i-Pace was the first of the big brands to show how an EV could also be a regular car, but one which also took advantage of better packing options the EV powertrain offers.
And finally, awful journalists need to get off Jaguar's back. Praising rivals yet critical of the i-Pace even though it out performs them! Criticising JLR for sharing platforms, yet praising VAG for platforms shared with VW, Skoda, Audi, Seat, Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche...
Part of Jaguar's problem is the press not giving them a fair review; always critical when they're doing the same as or better than rivals. Somehow they believe because it's British they should build ever nut and bolt bespoke to every car. Instead of congratulating when Jaguar leads in technology and taps in to a global supply chain of quality parts.
Unfortunately it may be too late - Thierry Bollore is determind to kill off Jaguar and who will stop him? Who will save Jaguar?