Electric cars spark boost at JLR creating tens of thousands of jobs

And Ralf Speth has also outlined ambitions to double JLR's car production to one million vehicles a year by 2020 – and double its workforce to 90,000.

The plans were outlined as a special meeting of political and business leaders at Warwick University on Thursday night, organised by Professor Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya, a close adviser to JLR and its Indian owners, Tata Motors, and the head of the university's Warwick Manufacturing Group.

Lord Bhattacharyya said JLR wanted to start work on the electric cars project at Coventry by 2018, with the first cars going into production by 2019.

It follows the launch of JLR's first electric car, the I-Pace, in Los Angeles last week.

It will be built in Austria 'because we couldn't do it fast enough in this country,' said Lord Bhattacharyya.

"But the next generation will be done here, hopefully. That will create 10,000 jobs, and there will be more employed at suppliers – that is everything from service skills and components. That could literally be another 50,000 to 60,000 jobs among suppliers in the region."

He said Mr Speth had also said he wanted to produce one million cars a year by 2020 – the company is expected to make 500,000 this year. "For that they will have to double the workforce to around 90,000," said Lord Bhattacharyya.

Regius Professor of Manufacturing at Warwick, he played a vital role advising tycoon Ratan Tata to buy the car company in 2008.

Since then massive investment has seen JLR sales soar as the workforce has doubled to over 40,000.

This included more than 1,000 jobs created at the brand new engine factory built on Wolverhampton's i54 site over the last two years.

Doubling production, even if that includes a large slice of electric-powered cars, will mean a busy time for the engine plant which is already expanding into a £1bn, 2 million sq ft facility. And that will mean more jobs in the Black Country as well as at JLR's growing headquarters at Whitley, near Coventry.

Lord Bhattacharyya said: "The internal combustion engine is still going to be important for at least the next two decades."

He stressed that the electric car jobs would be on top of the 4,500 engineering jobs already planned for a new expansion of JLR's Whitley headquarters.

"Every country wants this kind of development but JLR wants to make it in the UK. It is tremendous that it is going to be here in the Midlands."

The company would need Government support to enable the project to take place, he said.

"They don't want hand-outs but nowhere in the country has the capacity for this at the moment."

The project would include an electric battery factory as well as a car plant, and would need the equivalent of four power stations.

Another guest at Thursday night's event was Business Secretary Greg Clark.

He said JLR's ambitions to make electric vehicles in the UK was the sort of project that the Government's new economic strategy would support.

Lord Bhattacharyya said: "Mr Clark was extremely supportive.

"He took everyone by surprise by stating he would support this in its entirety.

"He said that everything he could do he would do."

He added: "This is a tremendous boost of confidence for the UK, that they have decided to make the cars here in the Midlands.

"This isn't pie-in-the-sky, this is going to happen by 2018, with JLR starting producing the cars in 2019."

A JLR spokesman said later: "Jaguar Land Rover CEO Dr Ralf Speth has confirmed his vision.

"It includes plans to double the production output of the business.

This means making EVs (electric vehicles) in the UK and the desire to make the UK a global centre of excellence for battery research and development.

"However this is dependent on overcoming infrastructure and capacity issues."