Ford is in talks with a chemical company about using its Bridgend plant to build a new off-road vehicle. Ineos Automotive plans to build a car to replace the Land Rover Defender, which went out of production in 2016. Talks come a week after Ford told staff working on the new Jaguar engine not to come to work for five days. Ford employs 1,850 people in Bridgend, though there have been concerns about the plant's long-term future. The car giant will stop producing ... Read more

What has been described as the UK’s “largest independent vehicle battery manufacturer” will reportedly open in early 2019 in Coventry, creating around 90 new jobs with Aston Martin as its first customer. The multi-million-pound, high-tech facility will be operated by a new joint venture – Hyperbat, which combines the innovation, manufacturing and logistics strengths of Williams Advanced Engineering and Unipart Manufacturing Group. Alongside providing a secure future supply chain for UK-based car-makers as their vehicles transition to electric power, there is also ... Read more

Jaguar Land Rover Solihull has been at the centre of that transformation for more than 10 years, and in 2017 it won The Manufacturer Manufacturing Excellence Award for ‘Leadership and Strategy’ at the first attempt.   Since the 2008 buyout of Jaguar and Land Rover (JLR) by India’s Tata Motors, JLR has become a global success story. Tata’s strategy was to invest heavily in growth at a time when other multinationals were retrenching following the worldwide financial crash. Since then, JLR has continued ... Read more

Thousands of the newly launched Range Rover Velar, revamped Land Rover Discovery and the new Jaguar E Pace – the baby version of the F-Pace SUV – were sold last month, helping hike JLR’s global sales by 6.1% in May to 48,281.   Sales for the company, which makes its engines at the £1bn factory on the i54 site to the north of Wolverhampton, were up in the UK, America and the Oversea markets – including the Pacific area, Middle East, South America, ... Read more

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) has launched the Future Mobility Challenge, an initiative to spawn partnerships between leading automotive brands and Innovative technology start-ups and SMEs.   BMW, Jaguar Land Rover, Bosch, Ford and Toyota, have partnered with SMMT to encourage new and small businesses to devise solutions to seven key mobility Challenges.   Technology innovators can submit ideas that address these opportunities and the best solutions will be invited to pitch at the Future Mobility Challenge event in October.   If successful, applicants ... Read more

The automotive industry can expect to achieve upwards of $160bn in annual productivity gains through the adoption of smart factory technology from 2023 onwards.  Almost half of all automotive business have invested more than $250m in smart factories, according to new research, more than any her sector.   The world’s top 10 automotive manufactures expect to realise an additional $4.6bn or 50% growth in operational profits – annually within five years of a full smart factory implementation.   The report, published by Capgemini’s Digital Transformation ... Read more