Jaguar spent years building suspense around the car that will define its future. It stopped producing all existing models, relaunched the brand with a rebranding campaign that divided the automotive world into two irreconcilable camps, and repeatedly promised that what was coming would be different from anything that had existed before. After all this theater, the name chosen for the first major electric tourer of Jaguar's new era is simply this: Type 01. Just one number above the Type 00 that served as the concept and development prototype. Simple, straightforward, and, for many, disappointingly restrained for a brand that clearly is not afraid to be controversial.
Jaguar felt the need to explain the name, which in itself is revealing. Rawdon Glover, the brand's managing director, was tasked with contextualizing the choice: “We reimagined Jaguar for a new era, inspired by what came before. Our engineers achieved this with a vehicle that looks and drives like no other electric car, but reflects a unique heritage. The name Type 01 is part of that story. For me, the zero also signifies a complete reset of the brand, and the '1', our first car for a new chapter, a 'one of a kind'.”
The connection to the brand's past that the name invokes is genuine and carries historical weight. Jaguar has a long tradition of naming with the designation Type, which dates back to the C-Type that won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1951. The legendary E-Type, considered by many to be the most beautiful car ever built, followed the same logic. The F-Type, the brand's most recent sports car before this radical reinvention, continued the tradition. The Type 01 therefore fits into a lineage with decades of history and considerable emotional weight for fans of the British brand.
But what really matters, beyond the name, is what this car is capable of doing. And here, Jaguar leaves no room for doubt. The Type 01 has a tri-motor powertrain capable of delivering approximately 1,000 horsepower and 1,300 Newton-meters of torque. Journalists who had access to the prototypes in the early testing phases described the car as safe, composed, and, more importantly than any technical specification, genuinely resembling a Jaguar in terms of character and driving sensations. In an era where many high-performance electric cars look similar to each other in how they present themselves to the driver, this distinction is not trivial.
The battery solution adopted by Jaguar is equally innovative and deserves special mention. Unlike the vast majority of electric vehicles that concentrate the battery in a single block on the floor, Jaguar divided the battery pack into multiple pieces distributed at the front and rear of the body. This choice was not aesthetically neutral: it allowed for a lower seating position and reduced the overall height of the sedan, bringing its silhouette closer to that of a traditional combustion gran tourer rather than a high-driving position electric vehicle.
The first prototypes of the Type 01 will circulate the streets of Monaco during the Formula E race weekend, in a location carefully chosen by the brand for its first public appearance. It is not yet confirmed whether these units are close versions of the final product or the same Type 00 development prototypes with updated camouflage. The definitive version of the car, without disguises, will be revealed later this year.
What Jaguar has built with the Type 01 is an existential bet of proportions rarely seen in the automotive industry. A brand with over seven decades of history that has stopped manufacturing all its models to completely reinvent itself around a single product. The name may be more modest than the occasion demands. The car, apparently, is not.
