However extraordinary the tech of the new Jaguar Type 01, this week’s launch was all about style and impact.
Jaguar took over giant digital displays across the New York, including Times Square’s 100-ft screen, before driving the AWD 1,000-hp EV GT through closed city streets for a fanfare arrival at an exclusive West Chelsea venue. Celebrated international chef Roze Traoré served bespoke avant-garde menus to a star-studded audience and MTV award-winning British singer-songwriter Sienna Spiro provided a live soundtrack.
The brand pulled out all the stops because this futuristic-looking car is bizarrely tasked with single-handedly leading Jaguar’s total automotive rebirth. The luxury 01 is essentially starting the marque from scratch after the company trashed its entire range and stopped selling ANY new cars over a year ago.
Jaguar Land Rover
The choice of New York was deliberate. Jag’s corporate master, JLR, is aware of fading demand in China and Europe and targets younger, wealthy American premium buyers. And JLR needs need to. The car’s physical realities are challenging. Stretching a massive 17 feet 2 inches long (5.24m) and 6ft7 (2 m) wide, the Type 01’s gargantuan footprint makes it useless for European roads. It’s way bigger than rivals, even dwarfing a Range Rover. It’s built for the wide, sprawling highways of North America.
Standard electric vehicles are tall because passengers sit above thick battery packs. Jaguar rejected this layout, with an ultra-long hood, super-low 55-in (1.4-m) roofline and long old-school design cues aiming to mimic the classic stance of historic Big Cats like the iconic E-Type.
To do this the engineers had to put 32 cells of the 118-kWh battery under the hood and build the remaining pack directly into the chassis. This creates four pod-like spaces for the occupants who sit low in hollows between batteries. It’s a bit weird, we suspect buyers will either love or hate it. Jaguar meanwhile claims the structure has a huge 57,000 Nm per degree of torsional rigidity, sturdier than a McLaren W1 hypercar.
Jaguar Land Rover
Jaguar needs to be full of hyperbole. This launch is the culmination of an agonizing rebranding campaign. Its early vague teaser phase (androgynous models dressed in pink, not a car in sight) was widely ridiculed, prompting Elon Musk to ask “Do you sell cars?” Things got worse when the extraordinary physical preview arrived. As New Atlas reported, the Jaguar Type 00 concept had strange cartoonish proportions.
Yet Jaguar’s design team did not flinch. The Type 01 production car uses plenty of that concept’s avant-garde philosophy, including what engineers call the “Impossible Panel” – a huge single-piece rear-quarter panel of aluminum stamped into shape by a four-story press with 2,500 tonnes of force.
And regardless of what it looks like, journalists who have driven Type 01 prototypes at Jaguar’s Gaydon test track say it’s more like a classic unflappable old-school Jaguar V12 than modern track-focused electric vehicles like Porsche’s Taycan.
Jaguar Land Rover
There’s nothing old-school about the 850-volt electrical system powering a tri-motor all-wheel-drive setup beneath that minimalist sheet metal body. With one motor up front, two at the rear producing over 1,000 hp and 1,300 Nm (958 lb.ft) of torque, performance is sizzling: 0-62 mph (100 km/h) takes 3.2 seconds, with mid-range overtaking (62–112 mph) dealt with in 4.0 seconds.
That’s despite a heavy 5,952-lb (2,700-kg) curb weight. The drag coefficient of 0.23 Cd helps. A maximum range of 450 miles (~725 km) under WLTP testing is impressive and a 350-kW DC fast-charger can add 200-miles-worth in 13 minutes.
The Type 01 is agile too, with rear-wheel steering twisting the back axle by up to 6 degrees, while front wheels turn up 43 degrees for a tight 37.7-ft (11.5-m) turning circle.
Jaguar Land Rover
Inside, there’s a distinctive slim horizontal display for primary driving and navigation data, while a smartphone-sized 7-inch vertical touchscreen handles climate functions on the console. Rear visibility is comes exclusively via a camera projecting onto a digital mirror – because the car completely deletes the rear window.
Audio involves an automotive first: a full-width panoramic Meridian soundbar spanning the base of the windshield, integrated with vibro-haptic seats that pulse with low-frequency bass.
On the outside, the body isn’t just about turning heads, it has an intricate array of active components help achieve that slippery 0.23 Cd profile, including active grille vanes in the front fascia and an auto-adjusting rear spoiler within the tail overhang.
Jaguar Land Rover
This level of tech, much borrowed from Jaguar’s Formula E racing program, means the Type 01 is a deliberate upward repositioning for the brand. It used to rival BMW and Mercedes, this new car is aimed somewhere between Porsche and Bentley.
Pricing starts at $130,500 in the US (£120,000 in the UK), with variations pushing beyond $150,000. It’s built at JLR’s Solihull UK site. Order books are due to open in early 2027, first deliveries expected in the second half of the year. Whether buyers embrace this radical electric vision or reject it as an unrecognizable departure from Jaguar’s legacy remains the single biggest question facing Britain’s auto industry.
Source: JLR
