Britain's biggest carmaker revealed the scale of its efforts to train its workforce to cope with the shift to zero emission vehicles.
Jaguar Land Rover said 10,000 workers would have to go through retraining programmes in the UK alone, both in its facilities and those employed by dealers selling Jaguars, Range Rovers and Land Rovers.
In its facilities in China, Slovakia, Austria, Brazil and India, the number of Tata Motors, its parent company, as well as in third-party dealerships around the world, rises by another 19,000, or about 60 per cent of the 47,000 people directly or indirectly employed by the company.
Jaguar Land Rover said it is embarking on a three-year global upskilling drive to bring connected and data capabilities and to support the transition to electrification. It did not put a cost on the scheme, but said it spent 20 million a year on training.
The company will introduce a new electric stable of cars, the shape and size of which has yet to be revealed, in a bold move that will result in the abandonment of Jaguars with combustion engines by the year 2025. Some of these will run on hydrogen fuel cell technology, although there is an indication that Range Rover and Land Rover models will follow.
The plan is for the entire fleet of vehicles to have zero emissions by the end of the decade. "Our plans to electrify our product portfolio are running at a rapid pace and we are rapidly scaling up our future skills training programme to ensure we have the right talent," said Barbara Bergmeier, executive director of industrial operations.
The group admitted that there was a skill gap in dealerships, with 20 per cent of 1,300 outlets unable to provide the service of electric vehicles. In total, more than 11,000 garage technicians employed by third-party dealers would need to be trained.
Jaguar Land Rover said it would have to train thousands more in its own workplaces, involving automotive engineers and factory floor workers who used to work with vehicles that have internal combustion engines. Safety retraining will be necessary as workers do their jobs alongside high-voltage systems.
The company said that Jaguar will become a pure-electric luxury brand from 2025.