Jaguar I-Pace: TG mag's EV of the Year

[Flenn.]

Jag’s I-Pace goes boldly in search of answers to making EVs sustainable

The Jaguar I-Pace gallops silently down the outside lane of the M5. Its seat is lightly toasting my back. My generic fruit-based device is charging under the armrest. The cause of my anxiety at this precise moment is not range. It’s the contents of a metal case over my shoulder that’s moistening my palms quicker than the heated steering wheel. TopGear is, and I don’t think I’m overstating this, on a mission to save the world.

By the time you finish reading this sentence, there will be 15 more humans in the world than when you started it. Roughly, two people die per second, and five are born in the same instant. About 130 million humans join the race every year, as 55 million depart it, and by 2024, there’ll be eight billion of us.

Who’ll all need feeding, housing, educating. And they’ll want to travel. Chances are, whether that vehicle is an old-fashioned private car or an autonomous, app-hailed pod, it’ll be powered by electricity. We’re going to need a big pile of batteries, and plenty of cleanly generated electricity too. Happily, humans are clever enough to find the sources for both lurking beneath our feet.

So, we’re off to drill some seriously deep holes, entrusted with a special drill-bit, safely encased in the Jag’s huge boot. It’s less than a foot across and looks like the Devil’s tungsten carbide-coated coffee grinder. Some responsibility, this. We’re on our way to the front line of Britain’s new energy age. Welcome to Cornwall.

Underneath my and photographer Mark’s backsides lie 432 lithium-ion ‘pouch cells’: the I-Pace’s underfloor battery pack. They’re made by LG in South Korea, then built into the car’s aluminium bodyshell in Austria. Jaguar is fiercely coy over exactly how much lithium goes into every I-Pace, but as a yardstick, a Tesla Model S 75D needs 63kg of lithium carbonate, equating to 12kg of pure lithium. The Jag’s 90kWh battery is 20 per cent bigger still.

Today, global lithium production is barely above a quarter of a million tonnes a year, but come the middle of the next decade, that’ll double. Tesla, Mercedes and Volvo’s electric HGVs will need a battery 10 times the size of an electric family hatchback’s. Not to mention batteries for 8bn iPhones. So, it’s hardly surprising that everyone’s hoping they’re sitting on a large pile of it. A tonne will set you back £12,500. The lithium rush is on.

Meanwhile, our National Grid often depends on non-renewable sources. Plug it into the mains and to generate the electricity the I-Pace’s battery feasts on, you indirectly emit 32kg of CO2 – not including the profanity-strewn exhalations brought on by trying to use certain charging networks at desolate service stations. London to Newquay takes us nine hours – through no fault of the car, I should add.

But the doom-mongering stops here folks, because we’ve got a solution, we’ve got some charge on board, and the reward for solving these conundrums is a massively rewarding way of motoring, if the I-Pace is a sign of electric things to come.

Of course it’s blissfully peaceful, searingly quick (just ask the Tesla Model S 75D it smoked in one of our recent drag races) and supremely stable on a downpour-soaked motorway, where its 2.2-tonne kerbweight, centred somewhere around the door bins, gives it the sure-footed solidity of an oil rig embedded in the seabed.

What the Jag does is introduce some new and exciting elements to the EV situation. Steering and handling you can genuinely enjoy. Crisp, eminently modern looks that aren’t afraid to challenge conventional proportions and detailing, but don’t overcook the wanton need to be contrary. Tesla probably edges it when it comes to infotainment – the Jag’s InControl Touch Pro interface isn’t quite as slick to use as it is to look at – but it’s a beautiful place to be, whether sitting in or standing next to it.

In the chicken/egg scenario EVs find themselves in, where they won’t get cheaper or have more range R&D’d into them until we buy more, which needs the haphazard charging network to improve (which won’t happen unless there’s more demand for the cars), the Jag’s superpower is that it looks fabulous, when an Audi e-tron or Merc `EQ C doesn’t. Even wearing ‘bowling club trousers’ burgundy on heavy-set wheels, it makes folks coo with longing.

Handy, when you’re rapping on the gates of a semi-abandoned mine and asking for a poke around. With time to spare before our mega-tool needs delivering, we’ve stopped at one of the old tin mines that litter this landscape. You spot them by the stone carcasses of the old head gear towers, stood stubbornly atop the landscape long after the industry that used them faded from this corner of Britain.

South Crofty mine in Pool is a prime example. Miners have been digging stuff out of the ground here since 1592. As recently as 1975, 200,000 tonnes of ore were being raised from more than 570 metres below the surface, yielding 1,500 tonnes of tin. It clung on longer than most, but as profitability waned, South Crofty finally fell dormant in 1998.