Jaguar Land Rover will unveil a new £100 million research and development centre in 2016.
Based at Warwick University, the National Automotive Innovation Campus will be used to develop new technologies for electric cars, inter-vehicle connectivity and Human Machine Interface designs.
Around 1000 academics and engineers will work in the building, with almost half of those being part of JLR's advanced research team. Almost 200 JLR researchers and engineers are already based at Warwick University.
JLR is the lead partner in the project and is bearing half of the £100 million cost, with Tata Motors European Technical Centre, Warwick Manufacturing Group and the government's Higher Education Funding Council also having vested interests.
The aim of the centre, says JLR, is to bring together academics, researchers and engineers from across the country to create the next generation of vehicle technologies. Head of research for the company Antony Harper said: "These collaborative research programmes will harness the best of UK engineering innovation, and with the extra capability the NAIC gives us, you can expect the number and range of new, fresh innovative ideas that we patent, and then take to production in the future, to increase significantly”.
The site will also be used to encourage school children and students to consider careers in engineering and the automotive sector, already named as a key goal of the recently announced See Inside Manufacturing initiative, of which JLR is a partner.
Construction on the new site is due to start in September next year.
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How secure is that exactly
Motor car research and technological advancements are closely guarded secrets where new car launches are concerned. How safe will JLR's engineering blue prints be on a University campus?
As secure as their computer lab...
I guess JLR competitors could try to hack the research computers in Warwick as they would do anywhere else... it would be funny if the University started receiving cleaner job applications from overqualified Germans, Koreans etc!
Bravo!
That's substantial investment. Hope this JLR-funded research bears fruit.
Please stick to the relevant subject
The Metropolitan County of The West Midlands came into existence in 1974.
Approval for the establishment of The University of Warwick (never was it called Warwick University) was given by government in 1961, with the first students arriving in 1964.
Today the campus is actually part Warwickshire and part West Midlands roughly divided by Gibbet Hill Road.
The statement 'Warwick University Campus is in Coventry!' is therefore nonsense.
Irrelevant details out of the way, can we now as an area and a nation be thankful that the Tata owned JLR is to open such an advanced R&D facility here in the UK. £100 million and 1000 staff are very significant numbers and should indeed encourage young people to get involved in automotive engineering.