Brace Yourselves: The Next Jaguar XJ Will Be Fully Electric

When we drove the shouty, supercharged V8-powered Jaguar XJR 575 last year, there was a sense of finality about it. After all, Jaguar’s supercharged V6s and V8s will be nearly gone by the time the XJ’s replacement finally arrives, and big, many-cylindered engines are quickly going out of fashion in our age of increasing electrification.

However, it’s looking like the next XJ won’t be powered by an internal combustion engine at all. Autocar reports that - having deliberated on the future of the XJ for some time - Jaguar has settled on replacing it with a fully electric vehicle.

A radical move, but then Jaguar does seem to be being quite ballsy when it comes to EVs - the I-Pace for instance (below) will beat all its conventional rivals to market. And speaking of the I-Pace, it’s from this incoming electric SUV - due in March - the next XJ is expected to plunder its powertrain.

Given that the base I-Pace is expected to have a twin-motor, 395bhp setup as a starting point, the future XJ isn’t exactly going to be wanting to poke. The prospect of Tesla-rivalling levels of power in an R-badged version certainly shouldn’t be discounted.

However the line-up takes form, we may not have long to wait for the first one to arrive: according to Autocar, we could be seeing it as soon as the fourth quarter of 2018, ahead of a 2019 launch.