The interior is plush and gets lots of cooing admiration from passengers with silver framed dark panels and grained white leather sports seats. The interior is luxurious enough, but I’d like to see more Jaguar DNA in there. It’s too generic and needs more nods to Jaguar’s rich heritage throughout the panelling, materials and fabrics. You need to know it’s a Jaguar even without the badge on the wheel. The three back seats are large with plenty of room, or fold down the middle arm rest for extra cup holders for two. The boot would take a large family's luggage with space to spare.
The batteries are all in the floor, so the weight distribution gives the I-PACE a low centre of gravity, plus the two motors weigh half that of a petrol engine for the same power and are set around the axle. The all wheel drive has superb cornering which, matched with the air suspension, delivers a very stable and luxurious ride. It handled some vicious speed bumps with consummate ease. The car also holds perfectly steady as you accelerate from 0-62 mph in 4.5 seconds, with no shimmy at all.
The only way you know the car is on is by the word “ready” on the drivers console, as it is totally silent at rest. There is a pleasant low whine as you accelerate which further reminded me that it was using super cheap electricity with no emissions and not burning expensive petrol. The acceleration
is linear at every speed, delivering a perfectly consistent response, no waiting for the revs to hit a sweet spot to enjoy the full torque. Electric driving isn’t just about economy and saving the planet (once we sort out the battery chemicals), there are real performance advantages too. The gears, are there any? That’s right the I-PACE transmission is a one speed automatic, so there are no clunky changes, no pauses to switch up or down.
Dynamic setting is hardly needed, just there to tick the boxes, the normal eco settings are more than powerful enough. Unless you manage to break into the e-Trophy circuit whilst it’s on and hope no one notices the extra I-PACE without the roll cage. Otherwise the eco setting is the one you’ll stay with. Steering has been upgraded on this new model and is super smooth and responsive, with good feedback in the corners and a splendid turning circle.
Planning for my journey North meant downloading various apps, including Zap Maps, which gave me the location of all the different charge points, such as Ecotricity, Instavolt, Polar and Charge My Car. The battery has a total of 90kW and the range on the dashboard gave me 201 miles on full charge, so not a lot of room for error on a 400 mile journey. The I-PACE uses regenerative braking,
which generates
power as you brake, feeding it back to the battery, improving braking and range. In fact I swiftly became enamoured with this system as normally when someone pulls in front of you forcing you to brake, you lose momentum and waste petrol, but with regenerative braking it essentially puts petrol back in the tank. So every time you are forced to slow down you actually get free power. Brilliant.
My trip was 200 miles up and 200 miles back. Would I make it in one day? My intent was to drive up in the morning, take a four hour meeting, recharging all the while, and then drive back. On the way up I drove conservatively not knowing if I would get the full 201 miles or not. If you accelerate ferociously you will use more power, so I drove using the one pedal system, just releasing the accelerator when I wanted to slow down. In fact I only really used the actual brake a few times on the whole journey.
I arrived ten minutes later than predicted by my sat nav driving slowly. They always say leave ten minutes earlier and you will have a much nicer drive, which I did. The meeting went on a little longer so I stayed at a good hotel and charged overnight. The next day I drove the 200 miles back, but used the accelerator a lot more while keeping to the speed limits. The car gave me exactly the same as on the journey up, so the small change in driving style made little difference. It accomplished the 200 miles with 30 miles remaining, so Jaguar are actually under estimating the range so you don’t get caught out.
So the top journey you could practically do is 690 miles in a day. Drive the 230 miles in the morning, then have lunch and recharge (two hours with a 50 kWh), then do another 230 miles, then have an early dinner whilst recharging and then complete another 230 miles and charge over night. So a total range of 690 miles in a day. You could drive from London to Orleans, stay the night in a nice chateau, then drive all the way to Montpellier on the Mediterranean, all in two days.
Jaguar also claim that you never need to change the batteries as they will give you a 1000 cycles of zero to 100%. So if you can go 230 miles on a single charge, that’s 230,000 miles. Jaguar also plans to prolong the life of I-PACE batteries with new recycling partnerships and second-life energy storage trials, so they do appear to be somewhat future proofed already.
The Jaguar I-PACE is one of the most highly decorated production cars ever, winning 62 international awards. In 2019 the I-Pace won the European Car of the Year award, the 2019 World Car of the Year, Best Design and Best Green Car awards, the first car to ever sweep three categories. The I-PACE is, as it says on the dashboard, ready now. The combination of luxury, performance and price makes it the car for discerning electric adopters.
This is a superb high performance all electric car and Jaguar were daring in being the first in the UK, which will stand them in good stead for the future. Get the first British luxury electric car and enjoy every minute of high performance petrol free driving.
Yves de Contades
surreymagazineonline.co.uk 13
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