Express & Star

Electric car could become familiar sight

This impressive electrically-powered Jaguar could become a familiar sight in Wolverhampton as bosses have revealed its plans for the new model.

Published
The new model during its road trip in LA.

The company say all of its models will be electric by 2020.

As part of this goal, its newest model, the I-Pace is Jaguar Land Rover’s first all-electric car and goes on sale next year.

Once fully built and completed in Coventry and Austria, the test vehicle made its way to Los Angeles where it completed a 200-mile road trip as it was put through its paces.

The images showing the car outside a classic American diner as well as driving along a main street complete with Christmas tree, have just been released by the carmaker.

During the test run, engineers managed to cover 200 miles from Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles to Morro Bay in San Luis Obsipo on a single charge of the car’s advanced lithium-ion battery.

Tweeting about the company’s latest car, @JLR_News said: “From 2020 all new Jaguar Land Rover vehicles will be electrified.

“Our first fully electric performance SUV, the @JaguarUK I-PACE has been on a 200-mile road trip in LA as part of its final validation testing ahead of its global reveal in 2018.”

Following the I-Pace concept’s debut late last year, the British manufacturer says thousands of potential customers have either registered their interest or placed a deposit for the production version of the premium electric SUV.

Jaguar Land Rover makes its two-litre Ingenium petrol and diesel engines at its £1 billion engine manufacturing centre on Wolverhampton’s i54 site, next to the M54, where it employs 1,700 people.

The I-Pace had to be built by contract manufacturing firm Magna Steyr’s factory at Graz, in Austria, because the infrastructure to build a mass-production electric car does not exist in the UK yet. But Jaguar Land Rover aims to make the West Midlands the centre for its electric cars in the future.

Pricing and specification will be announced in March next year.