Jaguar Land Rover To Develop EV, PHEV & EREV In Partnership With Chery

Indian Tata Motors owned Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) will adopt China’s Chery platforms for its future plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) and electric vehicles (EV). This was confirmed by Chery Chairman Yin Tongyao recently.

It was also noted that JLR will adopt the M3X and E0X modular architectures, which currently underpins premium Chery models like the Exlantix ET, Exlantix ES, Luxeed 7, Luxeed R7, Exeed RX, and Chery Tiggo 9.

Both Chery and JLR have maintained a collaborative relationship in China for over a decade starting from a partnership in 2012 where Chery was tasked to manufacture JLR vehicles for the Chinese market. This partnership has also benefited Chery as it was able to tap into JLR’s expertise in suspension setups particularly from Land Rover.

Fast forward to current times, the tables seem to have turned as this time around it would be JLR which would be benefiting from Chery’s vast expertise in the new energy vehicle space.

This collaborating would be spearheaded by Exeed, Chery's high-end brand which would grant JLR access to Exeed’s platforms for future vehicle development. Under this agreement, JLR will utilise two main platforms from the Chery Group, namely the M3X modular architecture which was developed for internal combustion engine (ICE) and PHEV application, and the E0X, suitable for both BEV and extended-range electric vehicles (EREV) application.

The M3X platform currently underpins models such as the Exeed RX PHEV and Chery Fulwin T9 that operates with the “Super Hybrid” powertrain, featuring a ICE combined with two electric motors via a 3DHT165 gearbox granting a range of over 1,000 KM and a thermal efficiency of 44.5%.

Meanwhile the E0X platform which was specifically developed with Huawei underpins models such as the Exlantix ES, Exlantix ET, Luxeed S7, and Luxeed R7. The E0X platform comes with an 800V architecture that boasts a decent energy consumption rate of 12 kWh/100 KM, coupled with advanced autonomous driving technology. It can also be equipped with air suspension which is perfect for JLR’s premium EV and EREV application.

As noted by CarNewsChina, this collaborative effort is much needed by the Indian owned JLR as the group has been falling behind in the whole new energy movement with only one EV model offered in its premium vehicle line-up, the Jaguar I-Pace which was launched back in 2018.

By adopting Chery’s platform, JLR is hopeful in boosting up its declining vehicle sales in the Chinese market which has in recent times heavily embraced new energy vehicles over traditional ICE ones.

It is noteworthy that JLR is not the only brand adopting Chinese new energy modular platforms to keep up with times. Mitsubishi’s Airtrek now uses GAC’s GEP platform, Smart and Lotus EVs are based on Geely’s SEA platform, Renault will utilise Geely’s CMA platform, Volkswagen would employ Xpeng’s E/E platform and future Audi models will be built on SAIC’s iO Origin platform.

By the looks of it, China and not Japan, America or Europe is the key for vehicle development globally for most brands moving forward in the new energy vehicle space as it arguably has the most matured next to the global EV powerhouse Tesla.