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Michael Taylor10 Jul 2014
NEWS

Jaguar Land Rover plans vehicle onslaught

British brands plotting to deliver 50 new models in five-year frenzy

Jaguar and Land Rover are winding up to a frenzied new vehicle assault, promising to deliver around 50 new products over the next five years.

With Land Rover striking strongly but Jaguar still struggling against the Big Three Germans – Benz, BMW, Audi – the British carmaker plans to deliver a raft of new cars, new architectures and an entirely new modular petrol and diesel engine family, dubbed Ingenium.

The Indian-owned premium carmaker will splurge £3.5 billion (A$6.4 billion) a year on a product surge that will deliver a core of plug-in hybrids in all brands, all planned to hit a 130 gram Co2 fleet average emission target by 2021 without losing performance.

Jaguar Land Rover's (JLR) director of group engineering, Dr Wolfgang Ziebart, yesterday said that the program was geared around moving from residual Ford-era engines and powertrains to an all-new, JLR-engineered solution capable of sub-100 gram driving cycles.

"Hybrid will be a key part of our product actions," Dr Ziebart said. "Any concerns people may have had that cars like the Range Rover wouldn't be able to survive Co2 targets can be assured that we see a clear path to providing answers.

"The goal is for JLR to be the leader in automotive technology. Our customers are buying sophisticated vehicles, so they deserve and can afford more sophisticated technology than others provide; hybrid is part of that," said the JLR technical chief.

The first all-new model in the product offensive will be the smaller Jaguar XE to tackle the long-standing mid-sized premium kings like the A4 from Audi, the C-Class from Mercedes-Benz and the 3-Series from BMW. It will debut the brand’s new modular aluminium architecture, dubbed iQ AI, plus a new range of engines.

Jaguar will follow this up with a large crossover SUV in 2016, which will be the production version of the applauded C-X17 show car and will also use a version of the iQ AI structure.

A new range-topping sports car will also take over from the discontinued XK and sit above the F-Type in both price and performance. On top of this, talk of a smaller crossover SUV, to compete with the GLK Mercedes-Benz, the Audi Q5 and the X3 BMW, refuses to go away.

Land Rover will kill off the Freelander nameplate (for now), replacing it early next year with a car branded the Land Rover Discovery Sport. An entirely new family of Discovery models, large and small are expected to follow down a semi-luxurious, family line, while the Defender name will spawn at least two (and possibly three) more rugged, simplistic models.

While JLR has had one team working hard on modular, lightweight aluminium architectures to suit both brands and their very different profiles, the engine boffins have been beavering away on the Ingenium engine architecture since its announcement at the 2014 Geneva Motor Show in March.

The modular engine is capable of working in three-, four- and six-cylinder arrangements, though JLR has not ruled out a V8 version for the big end of the Range Rover brand. It also insists it will set class standards for performance and economy, torque and refinement.

The low-emission engines are all turbocharged, with direct injection and variable valve timing and lift, and will be assembled in the first all-new JLR plant built in Britain in decades.

JLR revealed details of the engine family today, promising to duck beneath the 100-gram barrier in the XE while being gearing up to take advantage of the new powertrain for hybrid use.

The car-maker has taken a leaf out of the BMW and Mercedes-Benz playbook by starting on getting a single 500cc cylinder working as efficiently as possible, then adding them together.

This 500cc strategy means 2.0-litre four-cylinder engines and 3.0-litre sixes that could be either straight or in a vee, and the possibility of a three-cylinder motor for the XE Hybrid.

They also need to be scalable for rear-, all-wheel drive and harder-core 4X4 powertrains, Dr Ziebart said.

The diesel version of the powerplant, dubbed AJ200D internally at Jaguar, will be the first off the new Wolverhampton production line (and will, appropriately enough, end up in a Rover, even if it’s just a Land Rover).

Dr Ziebart admitted the new four-cylinder engine would be 80kg lighter than the Ford-derived engine currently used by JLR and would be offered with a choice of single- or sequential-turbocharged options at different ends of the model range.

It hauls JLR's engine lineup into the 21st century with roller bearings for the camshafts and balancers helping to deliver a 17 percent reduction in internal friction.

Both the petrol and diesel engines use the same bore, stroke, bore spacing and capacity for their aluminium blocks and all are turbocharged.

"Customers around the world are increasingly demanding cleaner-running, more efficient vehicles that maintain or even enhance the performance attributes expected of a rugged all-terrain vehicle or a high performance car," Dr Ziebart said.

"Engineering and manufacturing our own engines improves our ability to react to changes in demand and improves our ability to react to changes in legislation and competitive technologies in the future.

"We believe that with the range of technologies we are investing in, Jaguar Land Rover can absolutely satisfy the often conflicting requirements of delivering engaging high-performance luxury vehicles that reduce our carbon footprint in the long-term," he said.

Dr Ziebart insisted the Ingenium family was developed with low-end torque, effortless acceleration, class-leading emissions performance and low consumption as the targets.

With an average of 10 new products a year for the next five years, Jaguar and Land Rover are going to be difficult to ignore.

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Written byMichael Taylor
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