All-electric Jaguar XJ axed as new strategy is announced

Jaguar has confirmed its all-electric XJ has been scrapped only months before its intended release. The news comes alongside the announcement of a new wide-ranging EV strategy masterminded by new JLR CEO Thierry Bollare, which despite its all-electric powertrain, does not have a place within the new strategy. 

The new XJ was set to rival a string of new German rivals like the new Mercedes EQS and BMW i7, but has fallen at the final hurdle towards production, essentially putting to waste a huge amount of development and pre-production time and energy.

Jaguar has not precisely explained the reasons behind dropping a model which is seemingly aligned to it’s future strategy and so close to production, but it’s a move that we’ve seen before, with a similar last-minute cancellation of the CX-75 supercar.

> New Jaguar Land Rover electric car roadmap will see Jag become a pure EV brand

Though Jaguar has revealed the model would not form part of its new lineup, it has said that the XJ nameplate may be retained in future models, but will need to encapsulate an XJ’s unique attributes – ones clearly not met by the new model.

For now we’ll only be able to imagine what this dead on arrival luxury saloon might have been like, and given the sleek proportions of the prototype, is likely a real shame. 

Alongside Jaguar’s EV-plans, Land Rover is itself aiming to launch six new EVs in the next five years, the first coming in 2024. By 2030, ‘all Jaguar and Land Rover nameplates’ are set to be available in pure electric forms, bringing them closer to the zero carbon goal for 2039.