It has no rear window, will not fit into a UK parking space and – starting at £130,000 – ($172,000) is aimed squarely at rich tech industry buyers driving the wide open roads of America. Jaguar’s electric car, the Type 01, was launched in New York on Tuesday night and marks the culmination of a two-year rebrand that has been one of the most scrutinised in automotive history. Bosses hope the vehicle will appeal to a younger, richer audience than the manufacturer’s previous “shrinking and ageing” customer base of “men in their 50s”, said Rawdon Glover, 58, Jaguar’s managing director.
With an ultra-long bonnet, low roof and muscular design, the Type 01 is a sharp departure from its predecessor, the F-Type. It is also double the F-Type’s starting price of about £62,000. Buyers are likely to be rich, “urban” and “very design literate, very technology literate”, Glover said.
It is still recovering from a massive cyber-attack last year that cost the economy an estimated £1.9bn. JLR recently announced 4,000 job cuts in an attempt to save £1.7bn over two years, citing “intense competition and ongoing geopolitical uncertainty”. The Guardian understands Jaguar employees working on the Type 01 programme were offered voluntary redundancy along with the rest of JLR’s non-manufacturing workforce.
The car will go on sale in early 2027, with the first deliveries anticipated in the second half of the year. Asked if doubling prices would be effective, he said it was better than “to toil away as we have done for the last two decades in the volume premium space”. Range Rover also unveiled its first fully electric model in September with a starting price of £154,070 compared with £107,530 for its combustion engine predecessor.
Waning demand in China, a key market for luxury cars, has also hit Jaguar hard. Glover revealed that the Type 01 will not launch in the country for “a couple of years. We’ve decided just to hold off on that.” However, he added that China would eventually be “an important part of the equation … it’s very difficult for any car manufacturer to exclude the single largest car market in the world”.
PB Balaji, the JLR chief executive, has said the parent company will pivot towards North America and target more sales to millionaires and billionaires to turn its fortunes around. Glover admitted that while the Type 01’s launch was in New York, it “absolutely” could have been in Silicon Valley instead, reflecting the type of buyer Jaguar is targeting. He recently took a prototype to the offices of Nvidia, the California-based AI company, whose boss, Jensen Huang, had a ride and “loved it”.
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