Jaguar I-Pace: HALF of all I-Pace sales will be to BUSINESS buyers

HALF of all I-Pace sales will be to BUSINESS buyers

The Jaguar I-Pace – Jaguar’s new electric SUV – looks set to get half its sales from business buyers looking for a cheap to run premium SUV says Jaguar’s Fleet boss.

It’s only just over a month since the Jaguar I-Pace was revealed as Jaguar’s first electric car, and the first real challenge from a Premium car maker to Tesla’s dominance of the high price electric car market, offering innovative styling, impressive performance and a range of 300 miles from a single charge.

The I-Pace was arguably the star of the Geneva Motor Show, and the degree to which it rattled the competition was clearly evidenced by Audi’s unusual tactic of running their yet to arrive e-tron round Geneva, and Mercedes acting much the same with their also yet to arrive EQ C electric SUV ‘coincidentally’ revealed in ‘official’ spy shots.

So it’s clear that the I-Pace is already shaking things up in the premium market, and it looks like its arrival will see a big change in who buys a Jaguar too.

Jaguar Fleet sales and B2B sales have been increasing quite dramatically in recent years with the arrival of the XE and F-Pace, but, according to Simon Dransfield, Jaguar’s European Fleet boss, in conversation with Fleet Europe, the new I-Pace will be a big B2B hit.

Dransfield reckons that half of all I-Pace sold will go to business users (that number is probably helped by the deal with Waymo for autonomous I-Paces) thanks to the big cost benefits.

This includes low SMR (service, maintenance and repair) costs, but the fact that the I-Pace will attract a BIK rate of just 13 per cent in the UK(by comparison, an entry-level F-Pace will be charged at 30 per cent) is a big incentive for business buyers.

Although over half of all Jaguar sales are in the UK, Dransfield reckons that Norway (Europe’s biggest EV market), The Netherlands and France will be big markets too.

The question is, will Jaguar be able to build enough I-Paces quickly enough to satisfy impatient business buyers?