Jaguar I-Pace EV400 S 2018 first drive

Those in the front have plenty of head room, too, mind, and are surrounded by an interior layout that is recognisably Jaguar, with only a few novel twists. It’s not like being in, say, one of BMW’s i cars, which likes to throw new materials at you to make you feel like you’re sitting in the future. (You can even have wood trim, for heaven’s sake.)

The I-Pace’s seats are big, comfortable, faux leather at no cost or leather for a couple of grand – it’s remarkably easy, as with most premium cars, to add £10k, £20k to the basic price very quickly – and there are all-digital instruments and a new infotainment layout.

At the top is a touchscreen that deals with the navigation, audio, telephone and quite a lot of options. Below deals with the less required stuff, part touchscreen, part dials, and there are a few other switches because, unlike Tesla, Jag would rather not deal with everything via one big touchscreen.

I see the sense in that – but, then, I also see how quickly the mapping, and directions to chargers, for example, work on the Model 3, whose big touchscreen’s controls are seriously impressive. Somewhere between all these systems, there’s one perfect one.

It’s all designed, though, as the outside is, with verve and elegance. Interior fit and finish are strong, and the mechanical layout means there’s a lot of oddments storage. It has also given Callum’s team some flexibility on the outside.

The cab is further forward than an internally combusted car’s, the car looks agile and it retains a big grille, even though it doesn’t need all of it for the three independent cooling systems (motors, battery, interior).

The top bit flows air through a gap and onto the bonnet, maintaining easy, laminar flow to the body – whose black sides break up the bulk and which you’ll see on future Jaguar SUVs – to the back, which is, from a design standpoint perhaps, the least striking bit of the car. But to have a Cd of 0.29, it’s a necessity. “It’s high. It’s square,” says Callum. “I said to the design team: ‘Accept the physics. Make it work.’”

It encloses a spacious, 656-litre boot, mind, and there’s a 27-litre compartment at the front, too.

To drive, then? More vehicle-ish than a Tesla, in that there’s a key and a start button, and a handbrake on the dashboard although you’ll probably never use it.

Push D, swing the medium-weight steering (about 2.5 turns between locks) and either pull away using the creep function, which makes it feel like one of those old-fashioned automatic combustion-engined vehicle thingies or, if you’d rather – and I would – turn that off and pull away using the throttle.

It’s smooth. It’s quiet. It’s the kind of thing that would be perfect for a Rolls-Royce. Or the next-generation Jaguar XJ, not coincidentally.

You can turn the sensitivity of the throttle up or down a bit, and you can change how much regenerative braking you get. On the higher setting, there’s so much of it that, Jaguar reckons, you can dispense with 98% of all actual brake use, and you get used to it quickly. It’s why the brakes can be small. (Perhaps why a Tesla Model 3 didn’t perform very well in emergency brake tests by a US magazine the other week. The I-Pace seemed fine but we’ll stick the datalogger on it in the UK.)

Throttle response is set about halfway between how razor sharp it could be, and what we’re used to from an internally combusted car, so that you don’t kangaroo along like you would in a Ferrari F12 TdF with a sticky accelerator.

It’s quite compelling but, well, not unlike most other EVs, from that perspective. As the industry and the capabilities of the cars themselves get more interesting, will the way they drive get more similar? I suppose that’s going to be the challenge.

In normal mooching, the rear motor does the accelerating, so you don’t get any steering corruption or front-wheel scrabble, and the front one does the regeneration under deceleration because that’s where the weight shifts.

After a mile or two, it becomes a doddle to drive using only one pedal, all the way to a stop. That encourages you to drive smoothly and efficiently, but don’t for a minute think the I-Pace is slow. Lumme, it’s not.