The year is hitting Jaguar Land Rover hard. JLR has posted a £422 million loss for its financial year ending March 31, with last year’s return to profit being wiped out by the near total cease in demand for new cars during the coronavirus pandemic.
However, one shining success at the moment for an embattled JLR is the I-Pace, sales of which have risen by 40 per cent year-on-year. The I-Pace also accounts for nearly 11 per cent of total Jaguar sales, which is impressive. And, now that car showrooms are once again open, the I-Pace was the second most popular car bought in the UK in April. What came top? Another EV, Tesla’s Model 3.
Advertisement
With this sales performance in mind, improvements to the 2020 I-Pace – WIRED’s own current EV recommendation – could not come at a better time for JLR.
While the outer design has not been overhauled, internally the all-electric I-Pace now boasts a new infotainment system and three-phase AC charging to go with its 292-mile range. The improved I-Pace is available to order now from £65,195.
Thanks to an 11kW on-board charger now as standard (before it was 7kW), this means the car can access three-phase electricity supplies. Compared to single-phase AC power that uses two conductors (phase and neutral), a three-phase supply can transmit three times as much power. This means something crucial to EV users: faster charging.
Advertisement
When connected to an 11kW wall box Jaguar says 33 miles of range (WLTP) per hour is possible, while a full charge from empty now takes 8.6 hours – so overnight charging at home is covered with ease. If you have a 7kW wallbox adjust these figures down to 22 miles of charge per hour, and a full charge in under 13 hours.
As for fast charging, the new I-Pace using a 50kW charger can get 39 miles in 15 minutes, or using a 100kW charger this bumps up to 78 miles in a quarter of an hour. Jaguar say this translates to about 50 per cent more range on the new I-Pace in a given charge time.
Other improvements include the Pivi Pro infotainment system first seen in the new Land Rover Defender, dual-modem embedded SIM with 4G plan, wireless device charging, embedded Spotify, and Bluetooth for two phones at the same time.
Advertisement
As for driver assistance tech, prospective I-Pace owners can now optionally spec the impressive ClearSight rear-view digital mirror camera system first seen in the Range Rover Evoque. This allows the driver to switch between a traditional piece of reflective glass and a live feed from the rear-facing 1.7MP HDR camera at the flick of a switch.
But for the particularly health conscious, or severe hay-fever sufferers, Jaguar has also added cabin air ionisation with PM2.5 filtration to capture ultra-fine particles and allergens. You can set the car to filter cabin air in advance while on charge before a journey.
Now, even though that PM2.5 filtration capability theoretically means it would catch something the size of the coronavirus, this would be of little use if one of the passengers in the car carried the virus or if the virus was on any surfaces in the cabin.
Jeremy White is WIRED’s executive editor. He tweets from @jeremywired
More great stories from WIRED
🦆 Google got rich from your data. DuckDuckGo is fighting back
💰 The Animal Crossing fans running in-game businesses
🤑 Inside the ‘bullshit’ get-rich-quick world of dropshipping
🎵 The secret behind the success of Apple’s AirPods
Advertisement
🔒 The UK’s lockdown rules, explained
👉 Follow WIRED on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn
Get The Email from WIRED, your no-nonsense briefing on all the biggest stories in technology, business and science. In your inbox every weekday at 12pm sharp.
by entering your email address, you agree to our privacy policy
Thank You. You have successfully subscribed to our newsletter. You will hear from us shortly.
Sorry, you have entered an invalid email. Please refresh and try again.
