Jaguar Land Rover CEO Feels India Holds Much Unrealised Potential

Jaguar Land Rover promises a busy 2018 in India. This despite the fact that the India market has not kept pace with its expectations for growth - especially at the luxury end. So it will bring us 10 new cars this year as we have already reported. But it is the lack of policy clarity and any incentives to help grow the space that has the company a bit perturbed. After all, years ago, soon after the Tata takeover of the British brands from the Ford Motor Company, JLR had declared India as its 'second home market' after the UK. Says Dr. Prof Ralf Speth, CEO, Jaguar Land Rover "At the end of the day in India it is Tata, and Tata is absolutely our mother company. So we feel honoured; and Ratan Tata really saved the company, as you know. There will be one or two special things in India and it's great to be there. Nevertheless, we have also seen the economy in India is not developing as fast as we all have hoped. And we hope now (for) this kind of steady growth of the GDP with 6-7 per cent. But in India also from an economic point of view the breakthrough is coming. Please be assured, we are prepared to expand and follow in that economy."

Also Read: JLR plans 10 new cars for India in 2018

So, there is now finally some optimism. Jaguar Land Rover has been seeing steady growth with sales increasing 7 per cent in 2017 over 2016 at 621,109 vehicles sold worldwide. Significantly, that number is also three times the sales achieved just 8 years ago in 2009. While JLR did see some pressure in sales at the start of this year, with sales dipping in February by 2.6 per cent (over February 2017), it expects to top last year's overall in 2018. This is on the back of several new models, like the first all-electric model - Jaguar I-Pace that comes to market this year. It also has the Jaguar F-Pace SVR, facelifts on the Range Rover Sport (and its SVR avatar), Range Rover and Jaguar XE expected to hit the road this year.

The E-Pace was officially revealed in July 2017

Besides this its E-Pace compact SUV is also only now showing full sales realisations globally. In India JLR hopes to gain some momentum with its planned introductions, as also the recent launches like the Discovery and Range Rover Velar. The latter in fact was a finalist at the recently concluded World Car Awards 2018, coming in as first runner up for World Car of the Year 2018 - a great follow-up to JLR's win last year for the title, with the Jaguar F-Pace. The Velar did snap up World Car Design of the Year for 2018.

But the story will expand further as JLR gets into or returns to even more product segments for the first time. And despite the massive resurgence seen at Jaguar - in sales and new vehicle development terms, driving that growth, as always will be the Land Rover side of things. Speth says, "Below the mother brand Land Rover, we have three families: the Range Rover family and we done a lot for our Range Rover family, with a clear hierarchy and a clear product portfolio. In addition we also have developed vehicles on the Discovery side, with also the Discovery Sport and wait there is also a certain pillar coming!" That pillar is the Defender family that will make up the third pillar in the Land Rover plan to add further volumes. We expect some news to break around those offerings perhaps around the Paris Motor Show 2018, to be held in October this year.