The construction site of a brand new plant of Jaguar Land Rover near Nitra. (source: TASR )
Jaguar Land Rover is expanding the originally planned facility near the western Slovak city of Nitra, in a logistics facility called Material Planning & Logistics (MP&L). The possible reason behind may be the electric cars being produced in Slovakia.
The carmaker is enhancing the project in the factory now being built from 64,000 to 75,000 square metres. Another project, called Powertrain and covering 48,000 square metres and involving the assembly of battery modules, should be added as well, the TASR newswire wrote.
“The feasibility study is designed to lay the groundwork for a potential future expansion, provided we opt for such an alternative,” the company informed the newswire. “We’ve been making it clear all along that we’ll draw up a feasibility study with the aim of reviewing potential options for further expansion in Slovakia. The feasibility study is one of the bases for a strategic decision, yet to be made, however.”
The location where the company’s battery modules will be assembled has not been picked, said the automaker. “Wherever Powertrain is to be located, this will have no bearing on our long-standing ambitions of building a global centre for research into electric battery technologies in the United Kingdom and for plans to produce the batteries in the United Kingdom,” said Jaguar Land Rover.
The carmaker has previously announced plans of launching production in late 2018. When work began on its production facilities, Jaguar Land Rover said that the car plant's annual output capacity should be 150,000 vehicles.
Changes in plans
If Powertrain is approved, the number of future Slovak employees shall increase from the originally calculated 4,000 to 6,000, the Pravda daily wrote on August 26. Also, their salaries are expected to increase due to this demand, as well as the situation in the labour market.
“By 2020, all new Jaguar and Land Rover cars will be offered with electric and hybrid technologies,” Jaguar Land Rover spokesperson Lisa Palmer said, as quoted by the Pravda daily. “As for assembling battery modules, we are considering several possible localities around the world. We haven’t made the final decision yet,” she summed up.
The current Slovak leader in electric cars is Volkswagen Slovakia. The Slovak facility of the carmaker started producing the electric Volkswagen e–up! back in 2013 – the very first electric car by Volkswagen.
