With the automotive world arguably putting the handbrake on EV’s, Steve Kenchington – Chief Executive Officer at Motorcorp Distributors Limited (Jaguar/Land Rover in NZ) invited us for breakfast with Martin Limpert, Regional Director Overseas at the Hyatt Auckland to discuss the future of JLR’s House of Brands.
Martin told us that he spent a lot of time, certainly much of his young career at Porsche, but moved to JLR in 2018. He basically oversees every country outside the US, UK, Europe and China and was keen to chat about what’s happening inside JLR in the world of electrification and ICE, and the transformation journey that the industry is taking.
“As JLR, we are in one of the biggest transformations of our company with the modern luxury wave of the four brands (Jaguar, Range Rover, Defender and Discovery) being customer centric brand obsessed and digital data driven. At the same time, we see a huge dynamic and behaviour shift in the consumer environment.”
He says that globally they are seeing more ‘modern luxury clients’ striving to drive more eco-friendly products, and in turn, manufacturers looking to innovate, develop and deliver products that are more sustainable as well.
“Also, there are governmental regulations that obviously support the faster transition as well as incentive schemes in those markets. So I think it is important for us to have a strategy in line with these market dynamics that helps us to accelerate the transformation into cleaner transportation.”
He says that a big goal for JLR is the route to better electric vehicles. They are ‘pure electrifying’ products in their range by 2039 and are currently testing the all-electric Range Rover in Sweden, and next year they will be launching the first re-imagined electric Jaguars.
Martin continues, “On top of the reimagine strategy sits JLR being the proud creators of the most desirable and modern luxury brands for the most discerning of clients.”
He says that once we separated them into the ‘house of brands’ organisational structure, where each brand has a managing director that lives and breathes that brand, they were able to develop the brand vision and strategy accordingly.
“Range Rover stands as the absolute pinnacle of modern luxury. Defender is all about adventure. Discovery is all about versatility. While Jaguar is all about exuberance, modernist disruption, especially going forward in the future.”
In many ways Jaguar is the more difficult of their portfolio of brands to change, after all, it’s been about the engine, the performance, the design and the luxury, but Martin seems unfazed, saying that Jaguar will just be the absolute disruptive, exuberant, compelling, new definition of Jaguar going forward, which we’ll see starting to come into the market very soon.
Martin says that they do see a shift within clients towards brands being more experiential.
“It’s not just a car, it’s not just the best leather, etc, it has to provide a certain lifestyle, a certain ecosystem. There’s sustainability, there’s also technological advancements that our customers expect from us. If we just take the link between my digital environment [smartphone] and my car, it’s about connectivity and having everything everywhere.”
He says that JLR are working closely with NVIDIA, using their technology for ADAS. Every of their cars of 2025 and beyond will have NVIDIA chips. And they are looking into how AI can contribute further to advance their automobiles.
“So technology is cool and super important for us. But at the same time, we must be consistent with what we stand for within the modern luxury interpretation and put in the DNA of each of the four brands too.”
