Revealed: Jaguar unveils its first ever all-electric car

The marque that is synonymous with up-market British motoring has bitten the bullet and will start selling its first all-electric vehicle in 2018.

The electric Jaguar I-Pace has been unveiled in Los Angeles. Lucy Nicholson / Reuters

That bastion of British motoring refinement Jaguar has finally succumbed to the inevitable and unveiled its first all-electric vehicle, the I-Pace Concept.

The four-door, five-seat 4x4, which will go on sale in 2018, runs off a liquid-cooled 90kWh lithium battery pack that gets 300km of driving on one charge. Jaguar executives said the vehicle will produce the equivalent of 400hp and achieve 516 pounds-feet of torque.

This is the first all-electric vehicle Jaguar has produced, but not the first time the company has dabbled in harnessing electric power. Jaguar revealed the hybrid electric Project C-X75 concept in 2010 at the Paris Motor Show; the supercar could hit 100kph in less than three seconds and hit 160kph in less than six seconds – in theory, at least. Top speed exceeded 320kph.

While Project C-X75 was never slated for actual production, Jaguar says I-Pace will hit the market in nearly the same form in which it appeared at the unveiling. The company hopes to tap into the electric vehicle market that hit a half-million sales globally last year, according to Jaguar.

Hours before the official launch party, the Jaguar design director Ian Callum led private press previews in LA and London, including a virtual reality presentation that allowed reporters to “look” all around its exterior and interior workings.

Hard details remain scarce, especially considering the lack of tactile feedback that VR provides, but the inside includes lightweight slim seats and a sport driving position for the driver. The dashboard seems to have touch screens and a relatively minimal aesthetic, with broad visibility on the sides and above the driver.

Mr Callum described the I-Pace as having more in common with that precursor hybrid supercar than it does with conventional crossovers and 4x4s. Magnetic electric motors at the front and rear axles of the car deliver all-wheel drive like traction and aggressive acceleration – the I-Pace will be able to hit 100kph in less than 4 seconds, which falls behind Elon Musk’s Tesla Model X P100D in Ludicrous mode but 2 is seconds faster than the baseline Model X 75D.

Thanks to the absence of a combustion engine and transmission tunnel running through the center of its body, the silhouette of the car is sleeker and lower than conventional 4x4s, with increased interior space and improved driver visibility behind the wheel.

I-Pace will be able to reach 80 per cent full power in 90 minutes on a home charger.

Jaguar has declined to say what the price of the new 4x4 might be, but consumers can expect to shop it against the US$88,800 Tesla Model X, the $78,700 Porsche Cayenne Hybrid, and the $62,100 BMW X5 xDrive40e.

* Bloomberg

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