Jaguar is betting big on this Type 00 prototype, which is all electric and will likely cost around $200,000.Matt Bubbers/The Globe and Mail
Jaguar’s camouflaged Type 00 prototype slowly rolls to a stop at the company’s test track at its sprawling, state-of-the-art headquarters in Coventry, northwest of London, in England’s automotive heartland. Barely one lap in and I’ve apparently broken Jaguar’s controversial $200,000 electric vehicle, the car that is meant to reposition and relaunch the struggling brand.
The Type 00 is a big gamble for Jaguar. Known for elegant sports cars and luxury sedans, the 91-year old British brand – owned by India’s Tata Motors – stopped production of its entire vehicle lineup last year. Now, Jaguar is betting its future on a pivot to high-end EVs.
Pressing the accelerator into the plush carpeting of Jaguar’s ambitious Type 00 prototype, the first EV of this new era, all three of the sedan’s electric motors suddenly quit mid-corner.
But my co-driver, one of the car’s engineers, is unfazed. Someone pulls up, pops the hood, fiddles around for a minute and we’re off again. This a prototype, don’t forget, brimming with testing and diagnostic equipment; it’s meant to break so the cars customers eventually purchase do not.
Throughout the rest of the drive – on Jag’s private test-track that mimics highways, bad country roads and roundabouts – the Type 00 prototype drives just as you’d hope a big Jaguar would. The steering isn’t fingertip-light as on a Rolls-Royce, it’s weightier on the Jag and much more responsive. There’s an effortless wave of electric power from three electric motors delivering about 1,000 horsepower. (The company won’t share exact numbers yet.)
As the gigantic Type 00 hurtles forward, its long hood rises skyward. Acceleration is quick but not violently so. Air suspension – set up by ex-Aston Martin, ex-Lotus chassis wizard Matt Becker – is beautifully plush, letting the car easily absorb bumps and ruts, despite the fact it’s riding on huge 23-inch wheels. The body rolls gently as the car enters corners, but it doesn’t wallow. Add power and there’s the slightest hint of oversteer. Keep adding power and understeer takes over to remind you that you’re driving a four-door land yacht.
The Jaguar E-Type in front of the Type 00. Engineers drove the E-type to pinpoint how the Type 00 should feel.Matt Bubbers/The Globe and Mail
“People should feel this is a 21st-century XJ,” says Rawdon Glover, Jaguar’s managing director and the person spearheading the brand’s controversial reinvention.
That the Type 00 drives and handles so much like a modern (albeit electric) version of Jaguar’s long-running flagship XJ sedan is no coincidence. In 2022, the car’s development team drove a handful of all-time classic Jags – including the E-Type, original XJ sedan and XJS coupe – to pinpoint how the Type 00 should feel. I drove those classics in Coventry as well and the lineage is obvious. In fact, the way the Type 00 rides over bumps and rolls through corners is nearly identical – the engineers measured it – to the 1970s Jaguar XJ C V12 coupe.
The way the Type 00 rides over bumps and rolls through corners is nearly identical to the 1970s Jaguar XJ C V12 coupe.Matt Bubbers/The Globe and Mail
The Jaguar XJ C V12.Matt Bubbers/The Globe and Mail
This pivot toward publicly embracing Jaguar’s historic models is a departure from the brand’s original communications about the Type 00 – featuring slogans such as “live vivid” and “create exuberant” – which generated many negative comments online.
Even so, Glover is glad it got Jaguar back in the conversation. “Jaguar had been forgotten, largely ignored, was becoming increasingly less relevant in automotive spaces, and culturally and socially,” he says during an interview at Jaguar’s headquarters.
The problem, he says, was that Jaguar was unable to make good profit margins competing against the German brands – BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi – that dominate the premium car category.
“Their economies of scale, of manufacturing, procurement, are on a different level to what JLR operates at,” Glover says. In its best year, 2018, Jaguar sold 180,000 vehicles while its parent company Jaguar Land Rover sold just less than 600,000. For comparison, BMW sales hit 2.1 million that year, while Mercedes did nearly 2.4 million.
“To be able to compete, whether it’s unit cost or transaction price, and retain a decent margin on something like an XE [Jaguar’s compact sedan] – where that vehicle was really comparable to its peers – was just impossible,” Glover says.
Hence the decision in 2021 by JLR’s then-chief executive officer Thierry Bolloré to cancel Jaguar’s slate of upcoming models and reinvent it as an all-electric luxury brand by 2025.
But that 2025 deadline has come and gone.
The Type 00 won’t be delivered to customers until the first half of 2027, so Jaguar will have been without a new car to sell since it wound down all production in 2024 and 2025. That’s a long hiatus for a car company and its dealers.
“There was always a plan to pause,” says Glover. The Type 00 will arrive later than originally envisioned, he admits, but adds, “we felt it was more important to get it absolutely right.”
For its new flagship four-door, Jaguar is targeting a driving range of 700 kilometres from a 120-kilowatt-hour battery.
During our test drive, the prototype’s interior is mostly hidden under felt blankets, but it’s obvious the new sedan won’t have a rear window and there’s no traditional rearview mirror. Headroom is minimal because of the underfloor battery and low roofline. Controls for adjusting the side mirrors and steering wheel are (annoyingly) only accessible through the touchscreen. But those are minor issues. The good news for Jaguar is that its new flagship rides and handles like a big Jag should.
The bigger issue is whether there’s enough of a market for Jaguar as a high-end EV brand. Governments in Europe, the United States and Canada have recently scaled back EV requirements. Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Lamborghini and other luxury brands have downsized their electric ambitions, but Jaguar is pressing ahead. There won’t be a hybrid version of the Type 00 either, Glover confirms; it’s purely electric.
Jaguar hasn’t announced a price for the Type 00, but Glover says the brand is aiming for the “white space” above the German premium brands but below the likes of Bentley and Rolls-Royce. Somewhere around $200,000 in Canada seems like a reasonable guess.
The market for sedans in that price bracket, however, is small and the market for all-electric sedans at that price is even smaller. Given that Jaguar previously struggled to attain a suitable economy of scale with regular luxury sedans, SUVs and sports cars to drive healthy profit margins, pinning the brand’s hopes on such a niche product seems risky.
But the Type 00 isn’t the only new Jaguar. “That vehicle’s job is to reposition the brand, first and foremost. Other vehicles that will come do other jobs in the range,” says Glover. The business case, he says, is all about making sure Jaguar invests “sufficiently to make sure we’ve got some really breathtaking vehicles, but we don’t over invest” as the brand did in the past.
“We’ve not benchmarked lots of other cars and saying we need to have this or that,” Glover says. “What we have benchmarked is the cars of our past and says, ‘It needs to be the very, very best Jaguar’.”
The Jaguar XJ V12.Matt Bubbers/The Globe and Mail
The interior of the Jaguar XJ V12.Matt Bubbers/The Globe and Mail
The writer was a guest of the automaker. Content was not subject to approval.
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