Jaguar has teased its upcoming E-Pace crossover SUV, revealing the gruesome and rigorous testing that the new crossover has already undergone ahead of its official reveal next week. The compact performance SUV, as Jaguar likes to call the E-Pace, will undergo its final test at its world premiere on13 July where it will be revealed globally.
According to the Coventry-based car maker, Jaguar has unleashed “hell and high water to ensure that E-Pace worked on all surfaces and in all weathers.” A total of 150 prototypes of the crossover was put to a long 25-month test programme in the hands of 500engineers stretching to 120,000 hours across four continents. The crossover hit the race tracks from the notorious Nurburgring in Germany to the high-speed Nardò Ring in Italy.
The E-Pace also did test runs at the Arctic Circle where the temperature was down to -40C, then in the deserts of the Middle East in +48C. It also waded through 0.5-metre of standing water apart from the thoroughfare at the Walter Arena off-road complex of the South Wales. All this so that the “E-Pace can withstand a lifetime of use in the hands of the most active and demanding customers.”
Graham Wilkins, chief product engineer of the E-Pace, commenting on the upcoming crossover, said, “Our team of world-class engineers and dynamics specialists have meticulously tuned and developed a true Jaguar. Months of intense testing on roads and tracks around the world have delivered a compact performance SUV that is true to Jaguar’s performance DNA”
Jaguar has been in the midst of a crossover offensive ever since it introduced its first ever crossover, the F-Pace last year. Following that, the British marque will introduce the E-Pace, which will be positioned below the F-Pace and the production version of the I-Pace the latter is expected to arrive next year. The new E-Pace will be based on the Range Rover Evoque’s LR-MS steel platform.
The E-Pace would be competing against the German trio of Audi Q3, BMW X1 and Mercedes-Benz GLA. The entry-level E-Pace will be to the smaller XE sedan what the F-Pace is to the XF sedan. The crossover will be built at the Magna Steyr facility in Graz, Austria. Once the new E-Pace hits the road internationally, the Coventry-based car maker is expected to introduce the E-Pace crossover in India too.
