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An Anonymous Coward writes:
Until now, electric cars could be broken down nicely -- at the high end there is Tesla S & X, and then there is everything else (possibly including Tesla 3). A few possible competitors either quit early (Fisker) or haven't made it to production yet (Lucid, Faraday Future). This split covered price, luxury and range. Now there is a serious competitor from Jaguar and Motor Trend tested the I-Pace in Europe. While they report trouble finding charging points (it's a new car after all), they generally seemed to be impressed.
As BEV platforms go, the I-Pace’s skateboard layout is conventional. There’s a motor at each end, one driving the front wheels, the other the rear, and in between is a liquid-cooled 90-kW-hr battery pack with 432 lithium-ion cells that also provides structural integrity for the chassis. The Jaguar-developed motors are synchronous permanent magnet units with concentric transmissions that align the motors with the axles. Total output is 394 hp and 512 lb-ft.
[...] Much of Germany’s autobahn is subject to speed limits, so we spend a lot of time at 75–80 mph. There’s not much wind today, but the higher speed boosts consumption to 43 kW-hr per 100 miles. On one derestricted stretch I wind the I-Pace up near its 124-mph Vmax. It gets there easily, but I burn 6 miles of range in the process (and yes, a gasoline version would also burn fuel with such a surge). Feeling guilty at the extravagance, I back off and settle down to 75–80 mph again.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday June 09 2018, @09:00PM (1 child)
Jaguar is owned by Mumbai-based Tata Motors. Any edge in technology or quality that they ever had was lost when it was sold to Ford, who then pawned it off on Tata after ruining the brand and raping it of intellectual property.
I'm not sure Tata has the moxie to make this work on any grand scale. While they did restore some of the quality in Jaguar that Ford had ruined, the future is not that clear. [fool.com]
For many years, Tata manufactured cars that could not be sold anywhere on earth except India because they were simply dangerous. Jaguar was intended to be their quality play. But they are years behind the other big players in EVs.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 09 2018, @09:12PM
> Any edge in technology or quality that they ever had was lost when it was sold to Ford, ...
Beg to differ on this part of your rant -- before Ford and its corporate quality edicts, Jaguar quality was terrible.
imo, the one dumb thing that Ford did was to make a lower cost Jag that was based on a Ford platform. It might have made some money, but didn't help the Jaguar image at all.
The sale to Tata was under the gun of the recession,
https://www.birminghampost.co.uk/business/business-news/jlr-would-ruined-ford-says-7398872 [birminghampost.co.uk]
Jaguar was bleeding badly and Ford didn't have the cash to keep it going, along with the main Ford operations. Remember that Ford didn't take US Gov't bail out money, but they did sell off a lot of assets to survive.