JLR has BURGEONING order books for the Range Rover Electric and Land Rover Defender Octa

As JLR reports its latest results it reveals that the order book for the Range Rover Electric has reached 48,000 and for the Defender Octa 2,900.

JLR has been on a roll for a while, posting profitable results despite the ‘Jaguar’ bit of JLR delivering nothing.

But by focussing on producing and delivering high-cost, high-margin cars like the Range Rover, Range Rover Sport and Land Rover Defender it’s doing well, posting record Q1 results earlier this year with profit before tax of £693m – up from £435m in the previous year – on revenues of £7.3bn, with an EBIT of 8.5%.

Now, JLR has published results for Q2, and although they still show a profit of £398 million that’s down by 10% compared to the same quarter last year, however, H1 profits at £1.1bn are up by 25% on 2023.

The drop in profits in the last quarter is blamed on disrupted supplies of aluminium from suppliers in Europe affected by flooding, so isn’t a downturn in demand just a supply constraint which JLR says is returning to normal with healthy demand going forward.

That demand is for Land Rover and Range Rover models as usual, with big order books for the new Range Rover Electric which arrives next year standing at 48,00o, and orders for the £145k Land Rover Defender Octa standing at 2,900 worldwide, almost three times the allocation for the UK.