Jaguar Land Rover to invest £500million in Halewood car plant

Jaguar Land Rover has said it will spend half a billion pounds to upgrade a Merseyside factory to build hybrid cars and prepare for electric vehicle (EV) production.

Britain’s largest automotive employer – officially known as JLR – said it has already spent £250m on new car production lines, machinery, people and digital technology at the Halewood plant, with plans for £250m more over the coming years.

The investment will eventually allow Halewood to produce electric versions of its medium-sized SUVs, the Discovery Sport and the Range Rover Evoque, as well as traditional internal combustion engine versions and hybrids.

Trevor Leeks, Operations Director for JLR Halewood said: "This is part of our journey to full electrification where we're going to be carbon net zero by 2039 – electric vehicle options in every one of our cars by 2025.

"We're going to be producing full electric vehicles at the same time as our current cars with internal combustion engines and plugin hybrid electric vehicles as well.

"The plant has already expanded to allow for electric vehicle production to run alongside the production of its hybrid, diesel and petrol-powered Range Rover Evoque and Discovery Sport models."

JLR has said it is creating a "factory of the future" at the plant which has existed since 1963.

However, JLR, which is owned by the Indian conglomerate Tata, are yet to decide which all-electric electric model it will produce first.

Mr Leeks continued: "The workforce here are highly skilled. We've been manufacturing and launching cars for the last 60 years so it made sense for it to come here.

"The workforce here are well-versed with being trained into new products, new variants, new production lines and new production systems."

The historic plant has already been fitted with technology, including new EV build lines, 750 autonomous robot, laser alignment technology and cloud based digital plant management systems to oversee production.