JLR hasn’t launched a new car since 2022, and has delayed the new Jaguar and Range Rover Electric
In June 2021, Thierry Bolloré gave his only sit-down interview with Autocar in the middle of a two-year stint as JLR’s CEO.
Bolloré started the modern evolution at JLR and outlined his desire for the firm to focus less on the scale it craved in the 2010s and more on becoming a financially sound business built on creating more profitable models, the star among them a reborn Jaguar.
Four years on, where are those models? Derivatives aside, the last all-new model JLR revealed that is currently on sale is the Range Rover Sport, shown in May 2022.
JLR has had more challenges than most, including the recent cyber attack, but to go more than three years without launching a new car…
What’s happening? Bolloré was replaced in late 2022 by Adrian Mardell, who left the firm last week having launched no new models.
In 2023, JLR’s ‘House of Brands’ was announced, creating separate entities out of Range Rover, Discovery and Defender to join Jaguar, but none of these stand-alone brands has had an all-new car since its creation.
Bolloré was candid about what he found when he joined JLR. He said improving reliability was the “first pillar” of his Reimagine transformation plan for the firm, labelling what he’d inherited as “unacceptable”.
He spoke with surprise of finding a company working in silos and on unconnected systems, and one that needed more technology and digital design tools to ensure components were designed to be of a better standard and were better integrated at the start of the development process.
This would manifest itself with faster development times and reduced warranty claims, said Bolloré, who believed JLR was too slow to get cars to market and even then they weren’t of sufficient quality.
This is a mantra Mardell took forward – doubled down on, even. Asked at JLR’s most recent financial results briefing why the firm was so slow at product development and its cars kept being delayed, he pointed to the quality customer statutory requirement he introduced when joining the board that meant cars would be launched only once ready.
“We need to be customer ready [before we launch], and if that takes a few months longer, then that is our policy,” said Mardell.
Of the new JLR cars we know about, the Range Rover EV no longer has a set launch date and the new Jaguar is still a year away. A new family of smaller electric models led by a second-generation Velar is also scheduled for next year. Who knows when they really will be launched? It’s been a long time since JLR stuck to a launch date.
It’s a shame that Mardell, an honest if reluctant talker but clearly an astute financial leader and a man for a crisis, will not get to do what car company bosses are supposed to do: launch cars.
His replacement, PB Balaji, needs to urgently break the inertia.
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