JLR invests 500 million pounds in upgrading EV factory

Jaguar Land Rover announced on Thursday that it will invest £500 million ($669.6million) in parallel production of electric cars at its Halewood plant as part of the electrification strategy. Why is it important? This investment coincides to increasing pressure on automakers to accelerate the electrification of their vehicles, especially in China where competition for EVs is intensifying.

CONTEXT The Group plans to invest in 18 billion pounds in EVs before 2028, and has committed to delivering a new Jaguar electric in 2025.

The investment is also in line with JLR’s “Reimagine” strategy which aims to electrify its brands by 2030, and achieve carbon zero throughout its supply chain, product and operation by 2039.

KEY QUOTES Barbara Bergmeier is the executive director of industrial operations for JLR. She said: "Halewood, our first all-electric facility, will be a testament to our teams' and suppliers' brilliant efforts to equip the factory with the technology necessary to deliver our luxury electric vehicles that are world class". What's next? The carmaker announced that it had invested PS250m to transform the Merseyside plant for production of medium-sized luxury electric SUVs. The plant has new EV production lines, 750 robots that can operate autonomously, and cloud-based management systems. Reporting by Aby José Koilparambil, Bengaluru. Editing by Vijay Kishore.

(source: Reuters)