It’s already on the record that Rawdon Glover, Jaguar’s managing director, has one of the toughest automotive jobs on the planet.
His immediate task is to kill off (“sunset”) the current, mostly combustion-engine range of traditional Jaguar models and replace it from 2026 with a radical, three-tier EV line-up that lifts pricing into the realms of Bentley.
Speaking to Autocar, Glover – 11 years at Jaguar, with previous Volkswagen Group experience – is undaunted by the size of the challenge. The range will begin with a Porsche Taycan-busting GT – previewed by a concept arriving in December – followed by a Bentley Bentayga-sized SUV and finally a big four-door limo in 2029.
“Our approach to future Jaguars is quite different from other vehicles,” he said. “They start with a platform and work outward from there. We’re starting with a design language, and developed the platform and engineering around it.”
This new car range is expected to be very different in look from the short-nose, cab-forward I-Pace, Jaguar’s much-admired pioneering EV. The first car will feature a much more prominent nose, against the run of play in car design, which (apart from the scary cost of making them at Magna Steyr in Austria) is one reason why the I-Pace, along with the rest of the range bar the F-Pace, has gone out of production.
But Glover is still full of praise for the scene-setting original. “Given the level of engineering and ingenuity we’ve had to deploy to build the new cars, I suspect that without having made the I-Pace, we might not have been able to achieve it in time,” he said.
“It has helped us to learn directly about electric vehicles – whether it’s the nuts and bolts, or the task of creating a customer journey and actually launching an electric car. We’ve discovered these things are completely different from the cars we’ve launched before.” Now, all of Jaguar’s attention turns to the next phase of “recalibrating” potential customers.
This will start with the GT concept’s unveiling in the US in December, which is expected to build the market’s appetite for radical Jaguar EVs.