Jaguar Land Rover pledges to electrify everything

PanARMENIAN.Net - British automaker Jaguar Land Rover is the next company to make a pledge to electrify everything. The company, owned by India’s Tata Motors, announced Thursday, September 7 it would start introducing all new cars with an electric powertrain beginning in 2020. That would include the already announced Jaguar I-Pace EV and likely a future Land Rover Defender — proving whether hybrid cars can truly make it in all types of weather conditions, The Verge says.

JLR’s announcement comes a week after fellow British brand Aston Martin said it would electrify all of its cars by 2025, and more than a month after Sweden’s Volvo would end gas-only vehicle production and introduce cars with some sort of sort of plug-in capability starting in 2019.

The fact that all three companies were sold off by Ford in the late 2000s is something of a coincidence, but a reality given that all of them produce relatively few cars compared to automotive giants like General Motors, Toyota, and Volkswagen. Therefore, electrifying everything is likely the best path to meet current emissions requirements, as well as looming ones from the United Kingdom and France.

Jaguar Land Rover says it’s giving consumers more choice by electrifying all of its future products, and that’s probably fair. More buyers can be convinced that a Range Rover with some batteries in it may be all they need for stop-and-go Manhattan traffic.