JLR electrifies Halewood factory ready for all-electric Range Rover Velar and Evoque

JLR’s historic Halewood factory on Merseyside has received a £250 million revamp to get it ready for a new range of all-electric vehicles, with a further £250 million to be spent in the coming years.

The first car off the new production lines is expected to be a new all-electric Range Rover Velar, set to go on sale in 2025. It will follow the full-size Range Rover into the world of fully electric JLR cars, but will be the first built on Merseyside.

The electric Velar will make use of JLR’s new Electric Modular Architecture (EMA) platform, which is expected to bring long ranges and fast charging to the cars that use it. Velar production will be moving to the Merseyside site from its current home at JLR’s Solihull factory in the West Midlands.

Following the Velar out of Halewood will be a new all-electric Evoque, sharing the same EMA tech under its skin, while a new all-electric Land Rover Discovery Sport is likely to eventually follow the electric Range Rover pair. JLR is currently working through plans to relaunch the Discovery family alongside the more popular Range Rover and Defender models.

In 2023, JLR boss Adrian Mardell confirmed that EMA may be used for three or four new models, meaning a second, smaller Discovery model could also be on the cards. JLR has promised that all its brands will be electrified by 2030, so expect to see the electric Discovery Sport before then.

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Halewood was built in 1963 to produce the Ford Anglia, the car made famous in the Harry Potter movie The Chamber of Secrets.

The factory currently builds diesel and petrol plug-in hybrid versions of the Evoque and Discovery Sport, with both cars sharing the same platform and engine technologies. These cars will be built alongside the new models at the revised Halewood plant for a period, before the factory eventually goes all-electric.

Halewood’s transformation has seen the factory grow by 32,364 square metres and the final production line increased in length by 50 per cent to 6km to accommodate battery fitment. Alongside the new production lines, 750 autonomous robots, calibration rigs for the latest advanced driver safety systems and laser alignment technology to ensure perfect part fitment have also been added, creating what JLR calls ‘the factory of the future’.

JLR has also moved £16 million-worth of advanced kit to Halewood from JLR’s Castle Bromwich factory, which stopped producing Jaguar XE, XF and F-Type earlier this year.

Barbara Bergmeier, JLR’s Executive Director of Industrial Operations, said, “Halewood will be our first all-electric production facility, and it is a testament to the brilliant efforts by our teams and suppliers who have worked together to equip the plant with the technology needed to deliver our world class luxury electric vehicles.’’