JLR to move to university
Jaguar Land Rover is to relocate its 170-person advanced research group to the University of Warwick as part of a strategy to raise vehicle production from under 100,000 to 300,000 a year.
The luxury carmaker, inspired by the so-called “German model” of collaboration with academia, plans to spend more than £100m on collaborative research at Warwick in the next few years.
The move reflects a growing belief in politics and business that German–style collaboration between academe and industry can help a manufacturing-led recovery in the UK.
Vince Cable, business secretary, is said to be a strong supporter, inspired by a recent report by Hermann Hauser, a Cambridge technology entrepreneur. Hauser, who was born in Austria, proposed the establishment of intermediate bodies similar to Germany’s Fraunhofer institutes.
The research initiative at JLR, which is owned by Tata of India, follows the appointment of Ralf Speth, formerly of BMW, as chief executive earlier this year. In an interview with a national newspaper, he said: “In Germany all the car companies are involved with a university. We need to go more in that direction in the UK. We will do all our pre-development work at Warwick, and that will be a radical change.”
JLR has already moved 30 engineers and designers to a digital laboratory at Warwick Manufacturing Group, the intermediate body founded and run by Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya, the academic entrepreneur. Another 140 will transfer from JLR’s research base at Gaydon, Warwickshire, in the coming months.
Lord Bhattacharyya, an adviser to Ratan Tata, Tata chairman, said: “Our approach is to combine academic excellence with industrial relevance. Warwick will have a symbiotic relationship with a company that has state of the art manufacturing and that is a big contributor to UK output.”
WMG’s digital laboratory is a steel and glass building crammed with sophisticated equipment that includes an MRI scanner and computer systems for testing vehicles and their manufacture in virtual reality. “The digital lab is great and that is the direction we will go in,” Speth said. “We can’t go on developing cars the way that we used to.”
JLR and WMG researchers will work on developments such as electronic control systems, including collision prevention using GPS, and lightweight materials. Speth believes the technology is the key to building up critical mass and better financial returns.
JLR was badly hit by a world slump in the sales of luxury vehicles during the recession but registered a profit in the first half of this year. Speth said: “If we continue this way we will deliver a very good profit for the year.”
