Jaguar plans to accelerate its vehicle development using a manufacturing partnership with Chery, a move the British brand’s global managing director Rawdon Glover says is necessary to bring new models to market more quickly.
Speeding up development
The Type 01 electric grand tourer will resume Jaguar sales in Australia in 2027 with a price tag exceeding $300,000. This launch follows an extended redevelopment program that left the marque without a mainstream new-car range.
Glover, who has worked on the Chery joint venture before, identified engineering and purchasing as the main areas where Jaguar is drawing on expertise associated with “China Speed.” He said the collaboration goes beyond manufacturing into the processes that determine how rapidly cars can be engineered and sourced.
“We have a close joint venture with a lot of cross-collaboration in procurement and engineering. Those two places are probably where we have the most to learn,” Glover said.
Other European car-makers, including sister brand Land Rover and the Volkswagen Group, are also seeking to harness Chinese development processes to respond to shorter product cycles and intense competition. Audi has gone further than most in restructuring its European development operations through a partnership with SAIC.
Glover cautioned that replicating this speed requires more than simply directing European engineering teams to work faster, noting considerable differences in labor laws and structural variations between the two geographies. “It’s the entire ecosystem that they have that enables them to go at the pace they have,” he said.
While Jaguar is learning from Chery’s ecosystem, the brand is not using Chery-developed platforms. The Type 01 uses Jaguar’s bespoke Jaguar Electric Architecture (JEA), intended to underpin the next two Jaguars without any announced Chery platform sharing. The substantial engineering expenditure required to establish JEA will pay off on subsequent models, which will reuse its principal components and be “much quicker to market.”
Model strategy and sales
Separately, the Chery Jaguar Land Rover joint venture is set to build the revived Freelander range on Chery-developed electrified architecture at Changshu, China. Plans for an 11-market Middle Eastern sales network were outlined in early November, with a UAE launch expected in the first quarter of 2027.
