Will the pandemic put the brakes on demand for Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs)?
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Will the pandemic put the brakes on demand for Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs)?
While other SUV-makers are reeling from disrupted need, Range Rover's parent company Jaguar Land Rover remains unfazed, and is accelerating towards electrification instead.
"There is no doubt that the virus is rewriting the rules of urban life with both customer and corporate behaviour changing as a outcome. However, we believe that there will always be a function for the automobile and the SUV," says Martin Limpert, Regional Director of Jaguar Land Rover Overseas Region. (Photo: Jaguar State Rover)
07 Aug 2022 06:30AM (Updated: 04 Jul 2022 07:31PM)
As the global pandemic rages on, bringing to fore climate alter concerns like never earlier, the automotive industry finds itself facing the greatest upheaval since German inventor Karl Benz officially created the earth'due south first mod motorcar in 1886.
Modern order now knows what cities could look like without cars congesting their streets, and a growing number of them – Paris, Milan and New York – are re-evaluating their relationship with automobiles.
So, there's the dramatic reduction in pollution levels as a result of lockdowns, evidenced by satellite imagery from the European Space Agency.
What do these mean for the viability of Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs), which are known to be the biggest perpetrators of carbon emissions amidst automobiles? And the automotive industry, for that affair?
"In that location is no doubt that the virus is rewriting the rules of urban life with both customer and corporate behaviour irresolute every bit a result. Nonetheless, we believe that there will ever be a role for the car and the SUV," said Martin Limpert, Regional Director of Jaguar State Rover Overseas Region.
For the uninitiated, Jaguar Land Rover is the United Kingdom'southward largest automotive manufacturer built effectually ii iconic British car brands: Premier luxury marque Jaguar and Land Rover, creator of the Range Rover, "the original luxury SUV", which celebrates its 50th ceremony this year.
In these five decades, the Range Rover has entered the history books for innumerable feats and accomplishments, which include crossing the notoriously impassable Darien Gap forest and mountainous region between the N and South American continents; winning the inaugural Paris-Dakar rally in 1979 and then again in 1982; and being the start vehicle to ever be displayed at the Louvre Museum in Paris in 1971.
"The Range Rover has evolved into the most desirable luxury SUV in the world," declared Land Rover's Chief Creative Officer Professor Gerry McGovern, who was this year conferred the prestigious Officer of the Gild of the British Empire title by Her Majesty The Queen for his contributions to both state and industry.
Past pattern or otherwise, the Range Rover has indeed transformed into an icon synonymous with luxury and is today a pop culture staple of music artistes and rappers, social influencers and, of course, the Kardashians.
DISRUPTED DEMAND
Need for SUVs has soared in recent years, with fifty-fifty supercar brands like Lamborghini and Maserati joining the fray. At that place was no sign of abating – until COVID-19 came forth.
"Guild has been significantly impacted by the global pandemic, which creates both challenges and opportunities for the automotive manufacture, which was already going through a period of extreme disruption," noted Limpert.
Global sales for the Land Rover family plummeted 37.9 per cent year-on-year, with the brand shifting 55,280 units worldwide between April and June, against the backdrop of the worst of the pandemic thus far. All-time-selling models this period were the Range Rover Sport and the Range Rover Evoque.
Company officials, however, appear unfazed.
The carmaker proceeded with the launch of new models in the past few months even as many countries were still nether lockdown, and it noted a "positive response" to the releases.
These included the special edition Range Rover 50, limited to only 1,970 vehicles in recognition of the model's launch year (Singapore will get just two units) and said to be designed with "forensic attention to detail", as well as the Land Rover Defender, which was swiftly named Car Design News "Product Car of the Year" upon launch, and which will make it in Singapore on Aug 7.
"While the COVID-nineteen pandemic continues to bear on the global motorcar industry, we are pleased to run across initial greenish shoots of recovery," said Felix Brautigam, Principal Commercial Officer of Jaguar Land Rover.
The company is also expecting demand to continue its recovery, pandemic notwithstanding.
"Information technology is unlikely that people will desire to use shared services or public transport post-obit the pandemic. Equally the earth gradually returns to its 'new normal', they volition want to become back on the route in their own grade of private send. This could potentially bring a renaissance of the car as customers crave a safe, clean space that they have control of," Limpert added.
READ> From Ferrari to Lamborghini, how luxury carmakers are responding to COVID-19
Acceleration TOWARDS ELECTRIFICATION
For an automaker that has put millions of SUVs on the planet for half a century, the pandemic is now accelerating the carmaker's mission to shape futurity mobility and reverse its carbon footprint through its Destination Zero initiative of "null emissions, zero accidents and zero congestion".
"People are starting to travel once again only their focus has moved to health and well-beingness when because their transport choices. We have the ambition to make our societies safer, and our environment cleaner," said Limpert.
The company is certainly leading the charge in this regard with the all-electric I-Footstep, making Jaguar the commencement brand to offer a premium all-electrical functioning SUV.
Its sister brands are also hot on the electric trail, with the Range Rover Evoque and Land Rover Discovery Sport now bachelor with state-of-the-art plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) engineering science that combines the brand's new ane.5-litre 3-cylinder Ingenium petrol engine with a powerful electrical motor to deliver a total of 309PS and an all-electric range of upwardly to 66km per charge.
Merely is information technology enough to sway motorists towards the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) and justify their college price tags?
"There are pros and cons associated with all body designs. The challenge with an SUV is to combine all the attributes customers expect in terms of forcefulness, durability and capability with a powertrain that delivers existent-world range. Afterward all, these vehicles are designed to help customers achieve and explore remote locations, where charging infrastructure may or may not be available," said Limpert, acknowledging the drawbacks of current electric SUVs.
At 66km per accuse, that's more than enough to cantankerous the length of Singapore. But these PHEVs are not nonetheless available locally anyway.
READ> COVID-19: Jaguar State Rover deploys 160 cars to global Red Cross Societies
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