Jaguar Land Rover is set to cut more jobs in Britain as it moves all production of its Discovery SUV to lower-cost Slovakia before building its new Range Rover at an English factory.
JLR has previously said its next-generation Discovery will be built at its Slovakia plant and on Monday announced there could be some job cuts in Britain as a result.
Moving production from Britain will slash several thousands of pounds off the cost per vehicle. The new Range Rover and Range Rover Sport will however be built at the automaker’s central English Solihull plant on an architecture which is designed to allow for diesel, gasoline, electric and hybrid models to be produced.
Monday’s announcement comes after JLR said this year it will cut 1,000 jobs and reduce production at two of its English factories as demand for diesel cars slumps in the face of higher taxes and a regulatory crackdown.
The company has also blamed Brexit for hitting demand in Europe’s second-largest autos market, where demand fell 6% last year. JLR said in January it would decide this year whether to build electric cars in its home market after announcing all of its new cars will be available in an electric or hybrid version from 2020. The company, owned by India’s Tata Motors, builds nearly one in three of Britain’s 1.7 millions cars but is producing its first electric vehicle, the I-Pace, in Austria.
JLR’s new factory in the Slovak city of Nitra is due to begin production by the end of the year and will have a capacity of up to 300,000 vehicles. It already employs 1,400 people there as it gears up to open. In Britain, the company built just over 530,000 vehicles last year at three production facilities and also has a separate engine site and headquarters, employing roughly 40,000 people in total.
