At a star-studded event in New York City on Tuesday, Jaguar pulled the wraps off a car it hopes is the key to its turnaround effort.
The Jaguar Type 01 is a long, low-slung electric sedan featuring imposing, blocky styling -- a far cry from sleek Jaguars of the past. On the inside, the Type 01 is fitted with a 24-inch OLED screen in front of the driver, and an aluminum "central spine" separates passengers sitting on the left from those on the right.
The design echoes a concept vehicle Jaguar unveiled in 2024, called the Type 00, alongside a divisive new ad campaign. Some lauded what they saw as a bold new direction for Jaguar, others derided the move as unfaithful to the legacy of the 104-year-old company.
President Donald Trump, then a candidate, even waded into the debate, criticizing the ad campaign on his social media platform.
"It kind of took the world by storm, for better or worse," says Kevin Williams, staff writer at InsideEVs. "A lot of people weren't into it, and unfortunately it found itself in the middle of a lot of online culture war stuff."
But despite the controversy, that concept is now headed for production in the form of the new Type 01 -- and not a moment too soon, experts say.
"It's make or break," says Alistair Weaver, editor-in-chief of Edmunds. "I mean, you can only reinvent a brand so many times."
"Jaguar had a reputation of both being like, you know, a little unreliable ... but also the cars themselves felt they were just kind of a little old school," said Williams.
At the end of 2024, Jaguar announced it planned to stop producing new cars, in anticipation of a new vehicle launch in 2026. The move came after years of declining sales. In 2017, Jaguar reported selling 39,886 vehicles. By 2023, that number had collapsed to just 8,348.
"So instead of trying to sell the cars that, you know, clearly people were not resonating with, they decided to kill everything, and said, 'We're going to start fresh with something new,'" Williams said.
The Type 01 rides on a new electric vehicle architecture, with an estimated 400 miles of range from an 850-volt battery architecture. It's the most powerful Jaguar ever, with more than 1,000 horsepower, which helps the Type 01 rocket from a standstill to sixty miles per hour in 3.1 seconds.
The radical new design for Jaguar brings with it a radically bigger price tag. The company says the Type 01 will retail for $130,000 before options, putting Jaguar in competition with the likes of Porsche and Mercedes' "AMG" division.
"I think the argument is, 'Let's sell less vehicles at higher margin,'" says Weaver.
But the strategy is not without risks.
"There's kind of a global affordability crisis here, and this just seems like a kind of oddly timed vehicle," Williams said.
The Type 01 isn't just a tough sell because of its price tag. It's also an electric sedan entering a shrinking market for EVs, and one in which car buyers have been increasingly gravitating towards SUVs.
"It's not an SUV, it is an EV, it's 130 grand, there's a lot of things you look at and go, 'Well, you probably wouldn't start here,'" Weaver said.
But Weaver said the Type 01, in spite of the dark clouds looming over the market for EV sedans, might be exactly what a company like Jaguar needs to stand out.
"I admire their audacity," he says. "There was absolutely no point in them just building another super generic EV."