Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) today announced new details of its new four-cylinder engine family dubbed Ingenium. This is a high-tech engine family to replace the Ford-derived legacy engines left over from the Blue Oval’s ownership of JLR.
Key headlines include the promise of ‘sub-100g/km CO2 emissions’ in the new 2015 Jaguar XE, the first model to premiere the new British-built motors. Find our latest news on the Jaguar XE here.
The Ingenium engine family is designed from scratch to give Jaguars and Land Rovers the cleanest possible emisisons – a head start it’ll desperately need if the XE is to make any headway against the purest 3-series, A4 and C-class derivatives from the dominant Germans.
Jaguar Land Rover Ingenium engines: the details
At a workshop in the R&D base today, Jaguar Land Rover told CAR the inner workings of its new modular engine family.
Ingenium will spawn both petrol and diesel engines. It’s based around a modular 500cc-per-cylinder strategy, similar to BMW’s and Mercedes’ latest thinking. It’s deemed as the optimum capacity for efficiency and power.
So although the Ingenium engines will debut as a four-cylinder 2.0-litre turbodiesel, engineers hinted to CAR that the architecture could scale down to create a 1.5-litre three-cylinder for small capacity applications.
Equally, the Ingenium family could extend upwards – with the prospect of 3.0-litre six-cylinder engines, although JLR has yet to confirm whether they will be V6 or straight six in layout.
Mercedes-Benz is following the same formula – and will ditch V6 power for straight sixes, just like BMW.
Jaguar’s AJ200D: the new 2.0-litre turbodiesel for the XE
Codneamed AJ200D, the first fruits of the Ingenium engine family will start production in January 2015 at JLR’s new Wolverhampton engine facility.
This is a state-of-the-art engine, featuring many tech firsts for Jaguar and Land Rover.
It is lightweight, JLR promising a weigh saving of 80kg over the Ford units it replaces. It will be offered in both single- and sequential twin-turbocharged forms, allowing the company to offer different power outputs (and price points).
A third of the parts are made by UK component suppliers and the internals are said to be extremely slippery. Internal friction is 17% less than on today’s four-cylinder diesel engine – thanks to new roller bearings on the camshaft and balancers, new computer-controlled oil and water pumps and clever use of materials.
When will we see the Jaguar XE?
Stay tuned for more Jaguar XE news later in 2014. The company is due to show its new compact exec challenger this autumn.