JLR Spearheads U.K. Technology Development Center

Jaguar Land Rover announces a £50 million ($79.9 million) investment in a massive new technology, innovation and education center at the U.K.’s University of Warwick.

Construction of the National Automotive Innovation Campus will begin in September 2014. JLR will double the size of its advanced-research team to 500 when the 322,917-sq.-ft. (30,000-sq.-m) facility opens in 2016.

The subsidiary of Indian automaker Tata is the lead partner in the almost £100 million ($159.8 million) project, along with Tata’s European Technical Center, Warwick Mfg. Group and the U.K. government’s Higher Education Funding Council England.

The center, located 95 miles (153 km) northwest of London, is designed to create a large-scale collaborative research environment. It will bring academics from the U.K.’s leading universities together with researchers and engineers from JLR and its supply chain in a single, multipurpose, state-of-the-art research facility.

About 1,000 academics, researchers, technologists and engineers will work in the center, which will feature engineering workshops and laboratories, advanced powertrain facilities and the latest advanced-design, visualization and rapid-prototyping technologies.

JLR Head of Research Antony Harper says details of the specific research projects on which the NAIC research team will collaborate will be announced later.

“These will be long-term, multidisciplinary challenges, such as electrification, smart and connected cars and human-machine interface, which will help us create some key new technologies that will deliver a low-carbon future,” Harper says.

“These collaborative research programs will harness the best of U.K. engineering innovation, and with the extra capability the NAIC gives us, you can expect the number and range of new, fresh innovative ideas that we patent, and then take to production in the future, will increase significantly.”

Development of the new facility, which will complement JLR’s product-creation centers in Gaydon and Whitley, will be coordinated by JLR Director of Research and Technology Wolfgang Epple.

“Investing in collaboration, innovation, research and education is vital if we want to be on a par with our international competitors,” Epple says in a statement. “Our future sales success, the success of our global business – and the U.K. economy – lies in the engineering and innovation that will take place in NAIC.”

Creating a new national focus for automotive research and consolidating JLR’s growing research and advanced engineering operations in one center offers huge potential, he says.

The NAIC project is the next stage in JLR’s long-term research strategy, building on the automaker’s successful long-standing relationship with Warwick Mfg. Group. Nearly 200 JLR researchers and engineers currently are based at WMG, collaborating with university experts on a number of projects.

As well as the skills and knowledge that will be developed within the research projects, NAIC will have a key role in developing the skills of schoolchildren and engineering students, who will have access to NAIC’s laboratories and a dedicated engineering education facility.

“Economic growth can only be sustained if we and our suppliers can find the right quality and quantity of skilled people,” Epple says. “We need to ensure that we are inspiring people to consider engineering and encourage a passion for science, technology and maths from a young age.

“The NAIC will become a center of training and skills to help ensure we have enough young people wanting to develop a career in engineering and manufacturing. NAIC will also play a key role in nurturing the next generation of engineers and technologists.”

JLR’s plans for the center come as itse luxury brands are experiencing unprecedented sales success in the U.K. and around the world.

Combined sales in August jumped 28% to a record 27,852 units, putting the automaker’s 8-month total up 16% to 269,653 units. JLR deliveries were up 43% in China, North America 40%, U.K. 36%, Asia-Pacific 35% and other overseas markets 18%. Sales in Europe were down 1% due in large part to runout of the Range Rover Sport.

Sales rose in all major regions in the year’s first eight months. Asia-Pacific was up 29%, China, 21%, North America, 18%, the U.K., 16%, Europe, 5% and other overseas markets 19%.