INEOS Automotive says it’s learned from its mistakes

INEOS Automotive was created in 2022 from an idea brainstormed in a pub by non-car people including INEOS Group founder and chairman, Sir Jim Ratcliffe.

But while INEOS didn’t adopt the tech-bro strategy of moving fast and breaking things, it did attack a lot of traditional automotive issues with distinctly non-automotive approaches.

Speaking at the recent reveal of the 2026 INEOS Fusilier electric SUV (pictured) – the company’s third model after the INEOS Grenadier SUV and the upcoming INEOS Grenadier Quartermaster dual-cab 4x4 ute – INEOS Automotive chief operating officer Hans-Peter Pessler and the founder’s son, George Ratcliffe, admitted they got some things wrong and some things right.

“Well, if we had our time over again we probably wouldn’t have launched in 43 countries at the same time,” George Ratcliffe admitted when asked what he’d have done differently.

“In hindsight, that was a lot to do and the exercise of having to do translations of everything – warranty documentation, homologation documentation, servicing documentation, inventory, owners’ manuals – was maybe more work than we anticipated.

“And you have to invest the same to do it for tiny countries with maybe five sales a year as you do for countries where we expect to sell 30,000 cars a year.”

The other major issue he admitted to was the company’s sales model, which INEOS splits between aftermarket agencies and traditional dealers.

“It’s turned out about 50:50 between them, but it just feels like dealers are more incentivised and motivated in their work, which is down to them buying the cars off us and wanting to move them before they have to pay interest on those loans,” said Ratcliffe Jr.

“The agency model works better in some countries, though.”

There was also the issue of people charging in to lock down early Grenadier orders, only to keep altering the specification even after the cars had been built.

“We learned this lesson for the US, where we launched later than everywhere else. There, you put down the order and have six weeks to change anything before it’s all locked down,” he said.

“In other countries, people were really concerned about getting an early build slot, and didn’t think their specifications through, so they regularly tried to upgrade them. We are getting through the last of the pre-orders now, so that problem has fixed itself.”

Some vehicle issues have been fixed in software upgrades, including the reversing camera screen being far too small in the multimedia system, though others like the windscreen-wiper area, are intrinsic and can’t be fixed without very expensive re-engineering.

The Grenadier turned out to be a much more luxury-oriented vehicle than INEOS ever anticipated, leading to it making the top five finalists in World Car of the Year’s Luxury Car award, which led to its own problems.

“We always anticipated it being this rough-and-tumble machine you could wash out on Sunday night, but people are making luxury machines out of them,” said Ratcliffe.

“The issue is, we made our calculations on what the split would be and we entered into agreements with suppliers to take a certain number of pieces, then we had to call them and say ‘Actually, can you triple the number of aluminium wheels?’

“And there’s the opposite issue, where we have to call the steel-wheel suppliers and give them the bad news,” he admitted.

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