Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Cars
  3. Car News

Would an electric SUV make a good race car? Jaguar thinks so

Jaguar I-Pace eTrophy electric SUV races coming to Hong Kong, Paris, New York

By and

Jaguar I-Pace eTrophyWhen it comes to its first electric car, the I-Pace SUV, Jaguar is taking the old adage, “win on Sunday, sell on Monday,” to heart.

The Jaguar I-Pace eTrophy will see drivers line up in identical race-tuned I-Paces on Formula E tracks, during the same weekends as Formula E races. Jaguar claims this series is the “first international championship for production-based electric cars,” although Electric GT is also trying to get its own series off the ground using Tesla Model S race cars.

Recommended Videos

At 2017 Los Angeles Auto Show, Jaguar debuted its I-Pace eTrophy car alongside the standard I-Pace SUV concept. Coinciding with the reveal, Jaguar Racing announced the first team to compete in its global electric series. Led by three-time IndyCar Champion and Indianapolis 500 winner Bobby Rahal, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing will field two cars in the eTrophy series while also competing in the 2018/2019 global Formula E championship.

“Innovation is integral to motorsports and electric car racing is an important part of the future, so this opportunity came at the perfect time for RLL,” commented Rahal.

Jaguar’s I-Pace eTrophy will be what’s known in the business as a “support series.” It will “support” Formula E by giving fans something to watch before a Formula E race, kind of like a warm-up act. Race weekends usually include a lot of downtime, and support series like the I-Pace eTrophy help fill it. Jaguar already runs its own Formula E team, so the arrangement makes sense.

Jaguar says up to 20 I-Pace race cars will participate in each event, which will consist of practice and qualifying sessions, followed by the actual race, which will last 25 minutes plus one lap. Since it uses the same tracks as Formula E, the I-Pace eTrophy will take place on temporary street circuits in major world cities. It will launch as part of Formula E’s fifth season, in late 2018. Formula E itself uses single-seat, open-wheel electric cars that look more like traditional racers than Jaguar’s I-Pace SUV.

The first I-Pace eTrophy race will be held December 15, 2018, in Ad Diriyah, Saudi Arabia. The full calendar also includes races in Mexico City, Hong Kong, Sanya, China, Rome, Paris, Monaco, and Berlin, wrapping up in July 2019 with two back-t0-back rounds in New York City.

Jaguar did not release specifications on the I-Pace race cars, but photos show big rear spoilers and other changes. The cars will be maintained by Jaguar and shipped to each race, so drivers don’t need to do anything except show up. This means Jaguar doesn’t have to recruit teams to run in the series, and the convenience of this “arrive and drive” format should make finding drivers easy. In addition to the regular entrants, Jaguar plans to recruit a VIP guest driver for each race.

It will certainly be funny to see a bunch of SUVs mixing it up on a race track, especially ones with near-silent electric powertrains. But it makes sense to Jaguar: it plans to put the I-Pace on sale next year and, along with sibling brand Land Rover, will sell only hybrid and all-electric vehicles after 2020. Meanwhile, Formula E is reportedly planning a new series called Extreme E for electric SUVs, potentially giving the I-Pace another opportunity to shine.

Update: Added race dates

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Stephen Edelstein
Stephen Edelstein
Contributing Editor
Stephen is a freelance automotive journalist covering all things cars. He likes anything with four wheels, from classic cars…
Rivian set to unlock unmapped roads for Gen2 vehicles
rivian unmapped roads gen2 r1t gallery image 0

Rivian fans rejoice! Just a few weeks ago, Rivian rolled out automated, hands-off driving for its second-gen R1 vehicles with a game-changing software update. Yet, the new feature, which is only operational on mapped highways, had left many fans craving for more.
Now the company, which prides itself on listening to - and delivering on - what its customers want, didn’t wait long to signal a ‘map-free’ upgrade will be available later this year.
“One feedback we’ve heard loud and clear is that customers love [Highway Assist] but they want to use it in more places,” James Philbin, Rivian VP of autonomy, said on the podcast RivianTrackr Hangouts. “So that’s something kind of exciting we’re working on, we’re calling it internally ‘Map Free’, that we’re targeting for later this year.”
The lag between the release of Highway Assist (HWA) and Map Free automated driving gives time for the fleet of Rivian vehicles to gather ‘unique events’. These events are used to train Rivian’s offline model in the cloud before data is distilled back to individual vehicles.
As Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe explained in early March, HWA marked the very beginning of an expanding automated-driving feature set, “going from highways to surface roads, to turn-by-turn.”
For now, HWA still requires drivers to keep their eyes on the road. The system will send alerts if you drift too long without paying attention. But stay tuned—eyes-off driving is set for 2026.
It’s also part of what Rivian calls its “Giving you your time back” philosophy, the first of three pillars supporting Rivian’s vision over the next three to five years. Philbin says that philosophy is focused on “meeting drivers where they are”, as opposed to chasing full automation in the way other automakers, such as Tesla’s robotaxi, might be doing.
“We recognize a lot of people buy Rivians to go on these adventures, to have these amazing trips. They want to drive, and we want to let them drive,” Philbin says. “But there’s a lot of other driving that’s very monotonous, very boring, like on the highway. There, giving you your time back is how we can give the best experience.”
This will also eventually lead to the third pillar of Rivian’s vision, which is delivering Level 4, or high-automation vehicles: Those will offer features such as auto park or auto valet, where you can get out of your Rivian at the office, or at the airport, and it goes off and parks itself.
While not promising anything, Philbin says he believes the current Gen 2 hardware and platforms should be able to support these upcoming features.
The second pillar for Rivian is its focus on active safety features, as the EV-maker rewrote its entire autonomous vehicle (AV) system for its Gen2 models. This focus allowed Rivian’s R1T to be the only large truck in North America to get a Top Safety Pick+ from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
“I believe there’s a lot of innovation in the active safety space, in terms of making those features more capable and preventing more accidents,” Philbin says. “Really the goal, the north star goal, would be to have Rivian be one of the safest vehicles on the road, not only for the occupants but also for other road users.”

Read more
Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan hit the brake on shipments to U.S. over tariffs
Range Rover Sport P400e

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has announced it will pause shipments of its UK-made cars to the United States this month, while it figures out how to respond to President Donald Trump's 25% tariff on imported cars.

"As we work to address the new trading terms with our business partners, we are taking some short-term actions, including a shipment pause in April, as we develop our mid- to longer-term plans," JLR said in a statement sent to various media.

Read more
Toyota shifts gears: 15 New EVs and a million cars by 2027
Front three quarter view of the 2023 Toyota bZ4X.

After years of cautiously navigating the electric vehicle (EV) market, Toyota is finally ramping up its commitment to fully electric vehicles.
The Japanese automaker, which has long relied on hybrids, is now planning to develop about 15 fully electric models by 2027, up from five currently. These models will include vehicles under the Toyota and Lexus brands, with production expected to reach 1 million units annually by that year, according to a report from Nikkei.
This strategy marks a significant shift for Toyota, which has thus far remained conservative in its approach to electric cars. The company sold just 140,000 EVs globally in 2024—representing less than 2% of its total global sales. Despite this, Toyota is aiming for a much larger presence in the EV market, targeting approximately 35% of its global production to be electric by the end of the decade.
The Nikkei report suggests the company plans to diversify its production footprint beyond Japan and China and expanding into the U.S., Thailand, and Argentina. This would help mitigate the impact of President Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs on all car imports, as well as reduce delivery times. Toyota is also building a battery plant in North Carolina.
For now, Toyota has only two fully electric vehicles on the U.S. market: The bZ4X  and the Lexus RZ models. The Japanese automaker is expected to introduce new models like the bZ5X and a potential electric version of the popular Tacoma pickup.
Separately, Toyota and Honda, along with South Korea’s Hyundai, all announced on April 4 that they would not be raising prices, at least over the next couple of months, following the imposition of U.S. tariffs. According to a separate Nikkei report, Toyota’s North American division has told its suppliers that it will absorb the extra costs of parts imported from Mexico and Canada. Another 25% for automotive parts imported to the U.S. is slated to come into effect on May 3.

Read more