Jaguar Officially Going All-Electric by 2025 — Will Other Automakers Follow?
As car enthusiasts, we know that the end of the internal combustion engine is not only coming but it’s coming soon. Despite that knowledge, it’s still shocking to see just how soon it will be here. Just as shocking is when we see automakers make real plans to completely abolish the piston-engine. The most recent to do so also might have the soonest complete switch — Jaguar. The iconic British brand has just claimed that it it make the jump to 100-percent EV by 2025.
The new boss at Jaguar, Thierry Bolloré, has just announced the ambitious plan to go completely electric by 2025. That’s only four very short years away and completely undercuts every other premium brand. Not only that but Bolloré wants Jaguar to go completely carbon neutral by 2039.
To do so, Jaguar is going to slim down its model portfolio and switch to just one platform — an all-new, bespoke and purely electric platform. While there’s no other information or specifics on the sorts of cars that will be made, Bolloré has said that he’s essentially given his designers and engineers free-reign to design whatever they want, as they’re going to have to get incredibly creative to make the largest shift in the brand’s history.
“By the middle of the decade, Jaguar will have undergone a renaissance to emerge as a pure electric luxury brand with a dramatically beautiful new portfolio of emotionally engaging designs and pioneering next-generation technologies,” Bolloré told Top Gear.
The switch to full electrification will be an interesting one, as it will likely spell doom for the most beloved of Jaguar’s current lineup. The two Jags enthusiasts love the most; the F-Type and XJ; are likely going to meet their demise. Bolloré has already confirmed that the XJ as we know it is dead. There won’t be a new one, despite the fact that Jag has been working on one for awhile now. The project has been cancelled and a new, all-electric XJ project might emerge sometime in the future.
The F-Type as we know it is gone as well. While it hasn’t been formally announced, there’s no way an inefficient, two-door sports car stays once everything goes electric. Will there be an all-electric F-Type in the future? We hope so but there’s nothing announced just yet.
Will this switch from Jaguar push other brands to keep up? Will, say, BMW see this and decided to push its date to full-electrification up? Probably not to be honest, as Jaguar already has such a small model portfolio and a tenth of BMW’s customers, so it can make such a switch easier. Still, other premium brands should take note — the electric future is coming sooner than we might have imagined and Jaguar is jumping in early, with both feet.
[Source: Top Gear]