MT CONFIDENTIAL

Jaguar hasn’t invested all that money on a brand-new BEV platform for just one car, and the whisper around Coventry is the next all-electric Jag will be a replacement for the XJ sedan. It’s a radical move, but which was supposed to promote the development and manufacture of Ford models that could be sold around the globe, thus saving money, is slowly fragmenting. With revenues strong, Ford is giving more freedom of product divergence between its North American, European, and Asian divisions, says Steven Armstrong, president of Ford of Europe. “We are coming out of largely shared platforms into vehicles that are more selective. Now it’s more about which technologies—the propulsion systems, the safety systems—we can share, not so much the top hats and entire vehicles.” Code-named PPE, the platform will be used for Porsche, Audi, and Bentley BEVs from 2022 on. Three PPE variants are being developed, with Audi taking lead engineering responsibility for two and Porsche for one. PPE marks a major U-turn for Audi, which had originally planned to make its next-generation MLB architecture a convergence platform that could package internal combustion, hybrid, or battery-electric powertrains—but realized it would be too heavy and complex and result in compromised proportions. Porsche, which has already developed its own bespoke BEV platform, J1, has been brought into the PPE program because it can benefit from the economies of scale generated by sharing hardware. One twist: All Porsche PPE vehicles will be powered by e-motors developed by Porsche. PPE also gives Porsche the ability to develop all-electric SUVs, something it couldn’t do with the low-floor J1 platform.