Jaguar is about ready to launch – as we say in the car business – its Type 01, which is the lead device in a proposed new lineup of devices. Jaguar no longer makes cars – and it currently sells just one SUV, the F-Pace and not for much longer. 2026 is the final year of availability for what will be the last Jaguar vehicle that is not an electric vehicle.
Which probably means the end of Jaguar – because a device is just another device and a “Jaguar” in name only. It is like using the word house to describe a Frank Lloyd Wright house. These are two very different things. One is something rare and special. It is not just a house. The other is just a house; one of millions and as special and rare as a six pack of paper towels.
Jaguar – like other high-end brands that have abandoned their brand – apparently believes they can rebrand their brand, by going all-electric. The problem with that, of course is that electric vehicles are by definition generic brand vehicles, at which point the main thing that matters is whether one brand is cheaper than another. Aspirin, for instance. Bayer – the name brand – costs more than the generic brand. Both are aspirin. Some people will willingly pay more for the name-brand Aspirin but most people will be attracted by the lower-priced generic, because they are getting the same thing for less.
Yet here is Jaguar expecting people to pay more. The Type 01’s base price will be around $130,000. Why would anyone pay such a sum when – for $30,000 – they can get basically the same thing? Oh, but wait! The Type 01 is different! It will have 1,015 horsepower! As if that made a meaningful difference. 
It does, of course, in terms of the number – and the performance. But you’re still getting basically the same thing as you’d get if you bought a $30,000 Hyundai EV, which is a battery and electric motors. It was meaningfully different when you got a V12 – or an inline six – which is what Jaguars once offered, back when they were not the same as anything else. These engines were not the most powerful engines available; but they were very specifically Jaguar and that is what made them (and the cars) different. All you had to do was raise the hood to see the difference.
I was something like looking at a Frank Lloyd Wright house.
This fixation on horsepower is as blinkered as it is pointless. Blinkered, because while horsepower is important in a status car, it is not the only thing that defines a status car or makes it appealing. A steam locomotive has more horsepower than the Type 01 but it’s more interesting and so more emotionally arousing and both of those attributes are very important, if you’re wanting to create a brand identity and if you’re also wanting to persuade people to pay a premium price for what you’re selling. Jaguar could double the horsepower of the Type 01. Would that make it more interesting?
How?
Especially since it’s functionally useless. We have already passed the event horizon of usable power in street-driven vehicles. Once you have enough power to accelerate to in less than 3 seconds – which a number of other cars can already do – further decreases in 0-60 times will be fractional, no matter how much horsepower you have. There is a very meaningful difference between a car that needs say 8 seconds to get to 60 and a car that can get there in 3 seconds – but there is almost no meaningful difference between a car that gets there in 3 and a car that gets there in 2.8 (and even less difference between a car that gets there in 2.7 vs. one that gets there in 2.8 seconds). It is a chasing of diminishing returns – and it is also essentially pointless, since there’s little use you can realistically make of 1,000-plus horsepower on public roads.
At least, not much more use than you can make of say 500 horsepower.
Besides which, Jaguars were never solely about speed. They were primarily about how they looked. About their elegant looks. The Type 01 is not elegant. It is a bleak-looking box that resembles what a Chrysler 300 might look like if pressed by an industrial vise. It is a kind of rolling iteration of an East German housing block. It is heavy and ponderous looking – as well as gratuitously strange. There is no rear glass. Instead, a camera inside the car displays what’s behind the car.
That’ll be great when it glitches. 
The interior is eve bleaker. There is almost literally nothing in it other than grayscale finishes. It’s as spartan-looking as the interior of 1980 Chevette but (of course) a lot more expensive. Hilarious, isn’t it? Get the rubes to pay top dollar to sit within a frigid cubicle.
Oh, but wait! The Type 01 will come standard with 400 miles of driving range! That’s lovely, except for the time it will take to recover charge. The claim is that it’ll be able to recover about 200 miles’ worth of charge in about 13 minutes – assuming you have access to the extremely high voltage “fast” chargers needed to do that. Even so, having to wait for 13 minutes to get the charge equivalent of about a quarter tank of gas doesn’t exactly make you want to say Oh, behave!
Which brings to mind what did, once upon a time. Cue up the opening to Austin Powers and see for yourself.
Of course, London isn’t what it was once, either – and probably never will be again.
. . .
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It’s like car manufacturers forgot the lesson their dads taught them –if someone else jumped off a cliff, would you follow them? Apparently, yes, they will.