New Jaguar I-Pace battery EV to be built at Magna in Austria

The Jaguar I-Pace battery electric vehicle is set to be built at the Magna facility in Graz, Austria.

Automotive News Europe quotes Jaguar Land Rover boss Ralf Speth as confirming that the groundbreaking new model – revealed as a concept at this week’s Los Angeles Motor Show – will be constructed at the facility.

Magna specialises in vehicle engineering and contract manufacturing and has a number of deals with major car companies. It will, for example, handle some production of the new BMW 5 Series in 2017.

It is a long-time supplier of components to JLR. Earlier this year the two companies announced a collaboration on a new aluminium casting facility in Telford that will be operated by Magna subsidiary Cosma International.

The definitive version of the I-Pace will be revealed in late 2017 before going on sale the following year, with 2019 expected to be the first full year of production. ANE also reports that the annual production capacity for I-Pace could be up to 13,000 units.

Construction of the electric I-Pace would be one of two vehicles that Magna is currently gearing up to produce on behalf of JLR, which needs additional capacity to support its UK factories as part of its ambitious growth plans. It is also building a new factory in Slovakia, opened a £240m base in Brazil in the summer, has a production joint-venture in China and an assembly plant in India.

The identity of the second JLR vehicle to be made at Magna isn’t known, and it isn’t even certain that it will also be a battery electric vehicle. However, JLR has this week committed to a huge roll-out of EVs, plug-in hybrids and mild hybrids over the next five years.

The I-Pace’s battery electric architecture has been created with applications in other derivatives and model lines in mind. Ian Hoban, Jaguar’s vehicle line director, told Autocar at the LA motor show: “The motor, gearbox arrangement, motor siting, high-voltage system, battery frame and cooling system is the new architecture of the battery electric car. That is where we’ve invested our time, money and effort and clearly we’re doing because we need to be able to apply it and it has to be scalable.”