Transforming a car manufacturing plant entering its seventh decade into a futureproof facility, ready for AI-powered autonomous driving, comes with natural challenges. Among them: 1960s architecture drawings—and the imperial system. “We had to survey everything and go out with the tape measure,” explains Dan Ford, site director at Jaguar Land Rover’s (JLR) site in Halewood, Merseyside, England. “But the drawing’s measurements were off: we struck a drainpipe.”
Besides that minor bump in the road (the Great British weather and an August downpour meant work was delayed by 48 hours), JLR’s £250 million ($323.4 million) upgrade of its Halewood plant has been smooth. Off the River Mersey, 10 miles from Liverpool, Halewood has long been synonymous with the British car industry—and JLR is the UK’s largest automotive employer. (The company’s controversial Jaguar Type 00 will be built at a different factory in Solihull). Opened in 1963 by Ford of Britain to build the Anglia (the small family saloon starred as the flying car in the Harry Potter series), plans to transform the plant began in late 2020. Ford’s team ditched the tape measure for a digital twin, scanning 1,000 sqm (10,764 sq ft) of footprint, floor to ceiling, every weekend.
Halewood has now been modded for cars of the future. A fleet of 750 robots (“our version of the Terracotta Army,” says Ford), laser alignment technology, and cloud-based infrastructure join 3,500 JLR employees on the factory floor, expanded by 32,364 sqm (348,363 sq ft) to produce the manufacturer’s next-generation vehicles. New calibration rigs measure the responsiveness of a vehicle’s advanced driver-assistance systems, such as its cameras and sensors. Safety levels can be calibrated for future autonomous driving, says Ford.
The first stage in Halewood’s redevelopment was its new body shop, with two floors separated by 2.5 meters (eight feet) of concrete to account for heavy machinery, capable of producing 500 vehicle bodies per day. The new build line is now in the commissioning stage: pre-production electrified medium-sized SUVs are set to be tested through 2025. Forty new autonomous mobile robots now assist Halewood employees with fitting high-voltage batteries. Other additions include a £10 million ($12.9 million) automated painted body storage tower, stacking up to 600 vehicles, retrieved by cranes for just-in-time customer orders.
Halewood is JLR’s first all-electric facility. The UK government’s zero emission vehicle mandate, part of its plan to transition to a net-zero economy, became effective at the beginning of 2024—22 per cent of all new car sales must be zero emission. The law has forced the industry to effectively fast-track electric vehicle production, up to an effective ban on the sale of new petrol cars by 2035; the EU has similar regulations in place. Each of JLR’s luxury marques will have a pure electric model by 2030, with the Range Rover Electric set for pre-order (the company’s only available battery-electric vehicle, the Jaguar I-Pace, launched in 2018, is being discontinued).
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