Transforming a car manufacturing plant entering its seventh decade into a futureproof facility ready for AI-powered autonomous driving comes with natural challenges. Among them: architectural drawings of the 1960s—and the imperial system. “We had to survey everything and go out with a tape measure,” explains Dan Ford, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) site director in Halewood, Merseyside, England. “But the drawing was off scale: We hit a drainpipe.”
Apart from minor glitches in the road (great British weather and heavy rain in August caused a 48-hour delay in work), JLR's £250 million ($323.4 million) upgrade of its Halewood plant has been smooth. Located near the River Mersey, 10 miles from Liverpool, Halewood has long been synonymous with the British car industry – and JLR is the UK's largest automotive employer. (of the company Controversial Jaguar Type 00 Will be built in a separate factory in Solihull). Opened in 1963 for the production of the Anglia (a small family saloon that acted as a flying car) by Ford of Britain harry potter series), plans to convert the plant began in late 2020. Ford's team abandoned the tape measure for a digital twin, scanning the 1,000-square-metre (10,764 sq ft) footprint from floor to ceiling every weekend.
Hailwood has now been modified for future cars. A fleet of 750 robots (“our version of the terracotta army,” Ford says), laser alignment technology, and cloud-based infrastructure join the 3,500 JLR employees on the factory floor, creating the manufacturer's 32,364-square-foot facility for production. (348,363 sq. ft.). Next generation vehicles. The new calibration rigs measure the response of a vehicle's advanced driver-assistance systems, such as its cameras and sensors. Ford says safety levels may be adjusted for autonomous driving in the future.
The first stage in Halewood's redevelopment was its new body shop, consisting of two floors separated by 2.5 meters (eight feet) of concrete for heavy machinery, capable of producing 500 vehicle bodies per day. The new build line is now in the commissioning phase: pre-production electrified mid-size SUVs are to be tested by 2025. Forty new autonomous mobile robots now assist Halewood workers in fitting high-voltage batteries. Other additional facilities include a £10 million ($12.9 million) automated painted body storage tower, which can hold 600 vehicles, which are retrieved by crane for customer orders in time.
Halewood is JLR's first all-electric facility. The UK government's zero emissions vehicle mandate, part of its plan to transition to a net-zero economy, comes into effect in early 2024 – 22 percent of all new car sales must be zero emissions. The law forces the industry to ramp up electric vehicle production, effectively leading to an effective ban on sales of new petrol cars by 2035; The European Union has similar rules. Each of JLR's luxury brands will have a pure electric model by 2030, with the Range Rover Electric set for pre-order (the company's only available battery-electric vehicle, the Jaguar I-Pace launched in 2018, is being discontinued). .
