More investment and growth for Jaguar Land Rover
New cars, new factories, new technology - that was the pledge from the boss of Jaguar Land Rover as he vowed to invest 'huge amounts of money' in the business.
JLR, which has a £500 million engine plant on the border of Wolverhampton and Staffordshire, is also working with companies such as Apple to attract new customers from Generation Y, those born between 1980 and 2000.
Boss Ralf Speth said the cars of the future would make use of cutting-edge technology, such as Follow Me Ghost which is where a driver follows a 3D computerised image of a car as a navigation aid.
He also enthused about 'human machine interface' (HMI), the term used to describe the interaction between the driver and technology - essentially, the car's technology reacting to the driver to help control the vehicle and manage life on the road.
But he was less forthcoming about exactly what sort of new models could be expected from JLR - and laughed away a question about the firm targeting 850,000 sales a year by 2020.
It currently sells around 450,000 a year.
He did admit that JLR was having to negotiate 'volatility' in its key Chinese market but said he was confident of future strong growth in the UK economy.
"If the UK is to regain its once pre-eminent position in vehicle manufacturing, it needs to strengthen the links between industry, government and academia," he said.
"In the global automotive industry the winners will be those that innovate successfully. So we are going to invest over-proportionately a huge amount of money in new model development and capital infrastructure."
The luxury carmaker recently unveiled proposals for a new multi-million pound 900,000 sq ft factory next to its recently-built £500m engine plant on Wolverhampton's i54 site. Work has just started on clearing the ground to make way for building work in the autumn.
Speaking at an auto industry event at the NEC's Hilton Birmingham Metropole Hotel, Mr Speth hailed the engine plant's 'green credentials' – it has the biggest solar panel array in the UK on its roof, capable of generating enough power to meet 30 per cent of the factory's needs.
JLR had been 'reinvigorated' since its takeover by India's Tata group seven years ago this month, he added, revealing spending on research and development had quadrupled while it had doubled its number of engineers to 8,000.
