Faster Jaguar I-PACE SVR still on the cards

Jaguar Land Rover’s Special Vehicle Operations (SVO) boss has revealed that an opportunity exists for the British manufacturer’s go-fast division to study a long-awaited faster variant of the pure-electric Jaguar I-PACE.

Rumours JLR's performance division was working on a Jaguar I-PACE SVR date back to 2019 – just a year after the pure-electric SUV was launched – when SVO chief Michael van der Sande told reporters that it was a question of "when, not if" Jaguar would launch a faster version of its Tesla Model 3 rival.

Back then, it was rumoured the SVR EV would draw heavy influence from the Jaguar I-PACE eTrophy racers that were created for the one-make pure-electric race series held before Formula E championship races.

But more than a year on there's been no sign of a high-performance take on the battery-powered SUV.

Speaking exclusively to carsales, van der Sande said his department wasn't an active partner in the early development of the pure-electric Jag, hence the delay.

"We got to the I-PACE late," he revealed.

"Normally we like to be at the table in the early platform discussions so we can impact and tech protect for an SVO derivative and, frankly, we were not there so it's much more difficult to do something with that car in a viable way.

"[That's] one of the key reasons there's not an SVR expression of that car, but now we might still do something with the I-PACE, because that car has a lot of life left in it."

The SVO boss refused to discuss the Jaguar I-PACE SVR specifically, saying it was "too early".

But when asked what an SVR product based on an electric vehicle would look like, van der Sande said: "Our car will have more power than the underlying core cars, but there's a bunch of stuff we can do to the powertrain, chassis tuning, and clearly all the other attributes of an SV car."

According to van der Sande, the process of creating an SV car out of one of its core models would actually be easier with an EV than it is now, with many more benefits over ramping up the performance of, say, an F-PACE.

"Multi-mode motors, e-diff, torque vectoring, there's lots of opportunity to tune the car to suit the character of what you want to achieve," he said.

"I'm excited about that. Already now we're looking at both brands and saying, 'We've got these technology sets, whether it's an electric Jag or hybrid Land Rover. It's how can we use the box of bits we've got in such a way we produce a really exciting, coherent character to the car.'

"That again stays true to the underlying character of the core model that makes it very significantly better. I think electric powertrains can absolutely do that."

Explaining how he prefers his SV cars "turned up to 11", van der Sande said he will miss the V8 era as Jaguar moves to become a full-electric brand from 2025, but SVO is ready to embrace the electrified age.

"Clearly all of us love our supercharged V8 and it sounds great and it has bags of character and I'm sure a few tears will be shed when we finally walk away from it," he said.

"But the world moves on and we've made a very strategic choice for Jaguar to move to electric cars and I wholeheartedly support that."

The SVO chief has a close working relationship with new JLR CEO Thierry Bollore, having worked with the former Renault boss when he headed up the Alpine brand.

This has helped van der Sande express his requirements when it comes to choosing the car-maker's development partner for its future pure-electric platform to ensure an I-PACE scenario never happens again.

No timeframe has been given for the faster Jaguar I-PACE SVR, but the I-PACE range is believed to be in line to undergo a significant facelift and tech overhaul next year to ensure it’s still relevant come 2025, when Jaguar fully transitions to an EV-only brand.

So watch this space.