Jaguar-Land Rover prepares electric car factory of the future

British manufacturer invests £500 million to convert historic Halewood plant to battery car production

Jaguar-Land Rover: the electric car factory of the future

Photo by: JLR

By: Riccardo Ciriaco

Published by: Brian Potter

Sep 28, 2024 at 3:00am ET

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From historic factory to 'factory of the future'. This is Jaguar Land Rover's plant at Halewood, in the north-west of England, where the manufacturer is announcing a £500-million investment to convert the lines to the production of electric cars, which will complement the current production of combustion and hybrid models.

The new cash injection comes on top of the previous £250 million expansion of 32,364 square metres for the production of mid-size electric SUVs based on the Electric Modular Architecture (EMA) platform.

"The historic plant," reports JLR, "has been equipped with technologies including new electric vehicle production lines, 750 autonomous robots, Adas calibration benches, laser alignment technology for perfect parts assembly, and the latest cloud-based digital plant management systems to oversee production.

JLR: the electric car factory of the future

The JLR factory in Halewood

JLR: the electric car factory of the future

Inside the factory at Halewood

Production lines and solar panels

The new plans include 18,000 solar panels (equivalent to 8,600 GWh of energy/10% of the site's energy consumption), and 'further conversion work to accommodate electric vehicles of different sizes, including:

a new body shop capable of producing 500 bodies per day
modifications to 1.4 km of the paint shop, with an increase in ovens and conveyor belts to meet the growing demand for contrasting roofs
construction of a new automated storage tower capable of storing 600 painted bodies
the final production line was lengthened and extended from 4 km to 6 km to allow the assembly of batteries
vehicle production stations were extended to seven metres to facilitate the different proportions of the new EMA electric vehicles
40 new autonomous mobile robots (AMR) facilitate the installation of high-voltage batteries
high-voltage training for more than 1,600 employees
integration into the new £16 million facility of vital equipment from JLR's Castle Bromwich site, ranging from ABB robots to self-driving vehicles"

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"Halewood," comments Barbara Bergmeier, executive director of industrial operations at Jaguar Land Rover, "will be our first all-electric manufacturing facility and is a testament to the brilliant efforts of our teams and suppliers, who have worked together to equip the plant with the technology needed to make our world-class luxury electric vehicles.

This is all part of the plan to sell only electric cars from 2030 and zero emissions by 2039.