Jaguar Is Going All Electric By 2025, Prompting New Discourse On Renewables

Published on February 17, 2021

British car brand Jaguar announced new plans to become all electric by 2025. The automaker said that it will undergo a “renaissance” to emerge as a pure electric luxury brand.

Thierry Bolloré, CEO of Jaguar Land Rover, also revealed the company’s newest, global strategy: Reimagine.

Bolloré described the strategy as one “designed to create a new benchmark in environmental, societal and community impact for a luxury business.”

“We are harnessing those ingredients today to reimagine the business, the two brands and the customer experience of tomorrow, Bolloré said. “The Reimagine strategy allows us to enhance and celebrate that uniqueness like never before. Together, we can design an even more sustainable and positive impact on the world around us.”

The news does not only limit itself to the Jaguar brand. JLR announced plans for Land Rover to make electric moves, as well.

Over the next five years, the Land Rover brand expects to release six, purely electric variants of its currently vehicles; the company also said that the first of the six will come out in 2024.

To reach these new heights, £2.5 billion (~$3.5 billion) in investments will help back JLR on its EV journey and will focus on electrification technologies.

JLR also said that all Jaguars will run on electric power by 2030, as well as 60 percent of Land Rovers. In addition, the company aims to achieve net zero carbon emissions across its supply chain, products and operations by 2039.

More and More Are Going Electric

Jaguar Land Rover joins the list of several luxury automakers who recently announced plans to go fully electric.

In November, Bentley laid out plans to go fully electric by 2030, with all of its vehicles running on some form of electricity by 2026. Rolls-Royce will also come out with its first electric vehicle in the next few years. And of course, the world should be very familiar with Tesla.

Brian Moody, executive editor at Autotrader, believes that the new face of electric cars is luxury and performance.

“Tesla taught people that what they really wanted in an electric car was something luxurious and fast,” Moody said. “Now we have Audi, Cadillac, Land Rover, Lucid, Jaguar, Porsche, VW, and Volvo all building electric cars that are expensive and quick.”

Aside from luxury brands, General Motors said last month that it would phase out gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035; the company also recently revealed the newest models of the Chevy Bolt EV family.

A Future Impact

With all of these announcements, it seems like electric is the way of the future, but how exactly will that impact the environment, as well as our way of living?

Michael Bakas, Executive Vice President at Ameresco, says most people believe that the best way to combat greenhouse gas emissions involves going electric, but with that, electricity production still generates the second largest share of greenhouse gas emissions.

“The more we ‘electrify,’ the greater the load to supply, likely leading to a further increase in greenhouse gas emissions,” Bakas said. “The only way to counter this will be to generate electricity using renewable fuel (e.g. Renewable Natural Gas (RNG), Hydrogen, Renewable Diesel, etc.) and resources (e.g. Solar, Wind, etc.),” he says.

To help charging stations become more carbon friendly, Bakas says that the electricity serving that station must become the focal point of the conversation rather than the station itself.

“For instance,” he says “If the electricity consumed at a charging station was produced using a renewable energy source like RNG, then the impact on greenhouse gas emissions would be tremendous … The ability to use renewable natural gas in existing gas infrastructure makes it a cost-effective option in the near term even as electrification efforts accelerate.”

Bakas also believes that with the current administration’s focus on sustainability, along with a continued focus on climate change across the globe, it is not surprising that we have seen recent automakers’ decisions to roll out all-electric vehicles in the future.

“With a potential increase in momentum from leading automakers,” he says. “We hope to see adoption and support of alternative fuel use to further advance carbon reduction at charging stations.”

Lexi Jones is an award-winning journalist and Staff Writer at Grit Daily. Based in Las Vegas, she covers startup brands in entertainment, internet and LGBTQ+ startup news. She is also an editor of Grit Daily's "Top 100" entrepreneur lists.

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