FRANKFURT MOTOR SHOW: Alternative power plants in JLR'S future?

Senior Jaguar Land Rover personnel have strongly hinted at rolling out hybrid technology across more production vehicles than just the three alternative drivetrain projects recently unveiled – and across both brands.

"It's plug-and-play, really," said Jaguar Director of Design Ian Callum, when quizzed by Australian journalists on hybrid being adapted to the company's first SUV, the F-PACE.

"Go and have a look, see what you think [of the F-PACE's current layout]. All our cars have been protected for hybrid... Land Rover is already doing it. Could it be done for F-PACE? The answer is yes."

Jaguar's Global PR Director Richard Agnew added: "For launch we focused on getting weight out and lower entry price with more efficient diesel [option]. Hybrid costs us a lot more to produce and costs more for the consumer. Real-world efficiencies are also considered. Dragging 200kg of batteries along the highway at 60mph isn't so efficient."

Andy Whyman, Jaguar F-PACE vehicle program director suggested that "hybridisation and electrification is a big part of our future business, though how it relates to F-PACE, I can't talk about that. I'd like to see it, [but] there's 101 things we are considering for F-PACE."

Interestingly, that doesn't immediately include the short-term introduction of a Jaguar SUV family.

"It's a hugely growing market," said Callum. "Will it become the norm? I don't know the answer to that.

"It's not our priority to create a family of SUVs. We wanted to do at least one because the market was there for us to take, but in our own way.

"We think very differently from our sister company. We were very specific about doing one that fitted us, because we could choose the size, shape and dimensions.

"We didn't set off to say we'd do one middle one, one big one and one little one, like other companies. The proliferation of range at Audi and BMW is probably about ten-fold what we have got, and we have other cars to do as well, facelifts of the current range. The focus is still on sports cars."

As to further F-PACE variants, neither Callum nor Whyman would respond to questions regarding the V8 being a possible fit in the F-PACE, and nor will there be a variation on the five-seat configuration for now.

"Anything is possible within engineering but we're not launching F-PACE with seven seats. There's nothing imminent, certainly in the next 12-18 months. We've not got any immediate plans to do a long wheelbase," concluded Whyman.

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