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Jaguar Land Rover building new R&D center for hybrids, EVs, autonomous cars

The success of Jaguar Land Rover in recent years has largely been down to a resurgent product lineup, but a recent move into the research and development will see the British-based, Indian-owned brands take the fight to its German rivals more aggressively than ever before.
JLR is investing 50 million pounds ($80,345,000, as of this writing) in a joint R&D center in central England. The move will more than triple its staff dedicated to research, from 150 to 500, with Wolfgang Epple, JLR's Director of Research and Technology telling Automotive News Europe, "In order to play among the big animals in automotive and to be anchored in the mind of customers you have to have offered something unique, to be first in market. We want to be one of the key premier automotive manufacturers."
Jaguar Land Rover's 50-million-pound contribution represents more than half of the 94-million-pound tab, on the so-called National Automotive Innovation Campus. Based at Warwick University, Tata's European Technical Center, Warwick Manufacturing Group and the Higher Education Funding Council, an agency of the British government, are all chipping in for the facility.

Jaguar Land Rover undergoes $3.2 billion turnaround plan as sales slump

MUMBAI — India's Tata Motors on Wednesday announced a turnaround plan for its luxury car unit Jaguar Land Rover, which has been hit hard by trade tensions between China and the U.S., low demand for diesel cars in Europe and worries over Brexit. Under "Project Charge," Tata Motors said it plans to cut costs and improve cash flows at Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) by 2.5 billion pounds ($3.2 billion) over 18 months. JLR also plans to launch several new vehicles, including the Jaguar I-Pace and the new Range Rover Defender over the next few years and will offer a hybrid or full-electric version of all its models by 2020. "Together with our ongoing product offensive and calibrated investment plans, these efforts will lay the foundations for long-term sustainable growth," JLR CEO Ralf Speth said after Tata Motors reported a quarterly loss. JLR has trimmed its pre-tax profit expectations for the current fiscal year ending March 31, 2019, and expects to break even, Speth said, versus an earlier target of profit growth. As part of the turnaround plan, JLR will first focus on cash-saving "quick wins" like reducing non-product investments and speeding up asset sales, Tata Motors said in an investor presentation. In the near term it will improve efficiency in areas including purchasing and material cost, manufacturing, logistics and people, and will focus on strategic and non-core asset sales. JLR has already reduced the number of production days at its UK plants in Castle Bromwich and Solihull. The company said in its presentation it has saved 300 million pounds since it initiated the turnaround plan six weeks ago and is working on 500 ideas for the future. Tata Motors reported a loss of 10.49 billion rupees ($141.9 million) for the July-September quarter, compared with a profit of 24.83 billion rupees in the year-ago period. That was worse than the estimate of a loss of 2.40 billion rupees, according to Refinitiv data. JLR reported a loss of 101 million pounds during the quarter and its margin on earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) fell 130 basis points to 9.9 percent. Retail sales of its Jaguar sedans and Land Rover sport utility vehicles (SUVs) fell 13.2 percent to about 130,000 units, hurt particularly by tariff changes in China and escalating trade tensions. Demand in China remained muted even after the country cut import tariffs for cars and car parts to 15 percent for most vehicles from 25 percent from July.

Pivi Pro Jaguar Land Rover Infotainment Review | A massive improvement

Infotainment systems in Jaguar Land Rover products have irked us for a long while. They’re generally a good step — or several — behind other luxury automakers' infotainment systems in terms of features and looks. But the big problem has always been their functionality. Even right out of the gate, they exhibited an undue amount of lag and general bugginess. Pivi Pro is supposed to change all of that. ItÂ’s JLRÂ’s completely new-from-the-ground-up infotainment system that is quickly spreading across the companyÂ’s range of products. It features a new screen size and layout. Plus, the software itÂ’s running is vastly different from what we saw previously. Our Byron Hurd got a first taste of it with a number of JLR products in a short period of time and found it to be a big improvement. Now, weÂ’ve had a new Land Rover Discovery in the garage for a longer period to fully suss out the system. Will it hold up? Watch the video above for a quick tour, and keep reading for some more detailed thoughts. Before diving in too deep, you should know off the top that Pivi Pro is a massive improvement over JLR infotainment systems of old. There are still some issues, but the new systemÂ’s performance is exponentially better than what itÂ’s replacing. This is partly thanks to it now running off its own backup battery. This allows the whole system to load immediately upon startup, ensuring that you arenÂ’t sitting and waiting for items to populate after you press the start button.  The new 11.4-inch screen this software plays on is splendid to both look at and touch. ItÂ’s a super-high-resolution panel, and it takes to our inputs quickly and without protest. The new UI layout makes things easier and prettier, too. All of your important items are tucked into a panel on the left, making them super easy to find and select. Plus, a sticky “home” button means you can always find your way out of menus when youÂ’re done diving around. We dig the three-panel home screen and its minimalist style, but for those who might favor maximum functionality over a pretty home screen, you can replace this with rows of app icons. For those wanting to use their phones, there is indeed an in-car WiFi data plan available to buy. Plus, JLR newly allows you to connect two devices via Bluetooth instead of just one. Both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are nicely integrated with this new system.