Jaguar I-PACE Selected For Luxury Chauffeur Service At London’s Heathrow Airport
An all-new luxury chauffeur service by WeKnowGroup running to and from London’s Heathrow Airport is purchasing as many as 200 Jaguar I-PACE vehicles for the route, Jaguar has revealed.
The fully electric Jaguar I-PACE’s 298 mile range per charge is much higher than the average daily mileage for WeKnowGroup’s chauffeur routes, making it an ideal luxury vehicle for the service. The I-PACE also features an impressive 2-year, 21,000 mile (33,800 kilometer) service interval that means more time driving and less time up on the blocks in the shop getting fixed than internal combustion engine vehicles that require oil changes, filter changes, emission checks, and the like every couple thousand miles.
When the service launches this summer, it will become one of the largest electric vehicle fleets servicing the UK. 50 vehicles will form the foundation of the service, with an option to add a further 150 I-PACE vehicles if desired.
Jeremy Hicks of Jaguar Land Rover UK MD shared the manufacturer’s excitement about the deal: “What we have created in the Jaguar I-PACE is utterly revolutionary; a desirable, luxurious and state-of-the-art electric vehicle that’s practical for genuine everyday use, including the tough life of an airport luxury chauffeur car.”
The Jaguar I-PACE’s 90 kWh lithium-ion battery pack is comprised of 432 pouch cells that deliver a combined range of 298 miles (WLTP cycle). It can charge up at up to 100 kW, allowing for a fast recharge that gets it from a fully drained battery up to 80% in just 40 minutes.
Looking to the future, the I-PACE is also already compliant with London’s January 2020 “zero emissions-capable” requirements for private hire vehicles. Being just 2 years out, this new deal is just one of the first of what is sure to be a flood of chauffeur service purchases of plug-in hybrid and fully electric vehicles over the coming years.
The new Jaguar I-PACE is available to order now from £63,495 before incentives and any applicable rebates and is also the star of the recently announced partnership with Waymo which will see a fully autonomous version of the Jaguar I-PACE zipping around public roads.
“We have had huge interest and positivity from our customers worldwide. We’re also delighted that this endorsement extends to some of the biggest corporations on the planet. Through our partnership with Waymo (formerly Google self-driving car project) and this latest deal with Heathrow and WeKnowGroup, we’re excited to be bringing the electric future to more people than ever before,” Hicks added.
There’s a relatively short history of electric vehicle use for chauffeur services, and they have so far centered around Tesla vehicles, so it’s nice to see another model tapped for such use. As a quick rundown of what we’ve seen to date, here are a few other services:
There’s Tesloop’s US Southwest city-to-city service in Tesla vehicles, a service we first covered back in 2015. The company has seen hundreds of thousands of miles put on its vehicles, with very low service and fuel costs.
CleanTechnica Director Zach Shahan and a few guys in Poland and Germany launched a similar city-to-city chauffeur service — Tesla Shuttle — in Central Europe. Recently, the company opened up access to other Tesla owners to join the network in other parts of Europe and the USA.\
Last year, a hotel in Poznan, Poland, launched an in-house Tesla Model X shuttle/chauffeur service.
Amsterdam is full of Tesla taxis — including most of the taxis at Amsterdam Airport being Tesla vehicles — and there are at least a few other Tesla taxi services around the world as well.
Know of any other standout examples?
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