Type 01 – the most important Jaguar ever – as explained by its designers (but not Gerry)

So here are the long-awaited exterior pictures of the Jaguar Type 01 (with a few interior shots already quietly shown in mid-August). In simple terms, if enough wealthy buyers like the striking ensemble enough to pay the circa £125,000 starting fee as Jaguar attempts to double its average transaction price and move to the space at the top of the premium market – as well as attracting many more to the radical new direction of the broader range to follow – the brand could be saved. If not, JLR might just become LR.

First impressions – especially in the metal – are important and very good. The long nosed, low-slung, large 23-inch wheeled, all-electric GT with ‘fuller metal jacket’ rear – is brutishly elegant. Dramatic proportions are key – the Type 01 is 5.2-metres long but only 1.4m high – and it boasts a clever new platform underneath with battery packaging nudged further forward to allow for a decent rear-passenger footwell. 

 The front eschews the ‘wall of lights’ grille approximation that Mercedes and now Bentley (with its Torcal) have taken for their full-electric cars, and instead just offers four ultra-thin headlamps flanking a section of metal that is geometrically ribbed, as a first of many examples of one of the re-born Jaguar brand’s differentiators, ‘the strike-through graphic’. “It’s all about presence,” head of exterior design, Alexey Andreev explained in Gaydon: “The first thing that establishes that presence is the new signature lamp graphic. Four lines, very bold, modern and instantly recognisable, even from a distance. 

We’ve completely reimagined the face of a Jaguar. It’s an electric car and that enables us. We don’t need a grille in the centre anymore. Instead, we have a subtle hint to the strike-through graphic. These are the thinnest lamps we’ve ever done and sit high to give the car’s face confidence and go right to the edges to emphasise width. This confidence, this width, gives the presence.”

Very little else interrupts that face, as Andreev continued: “The technology, the active vanes, cameras, sensors, most of that is integrated into the lower black area which does two things. Number one, it keeps the car’s face clean and focused, but in combination with these lower lamps, helps to further ‘ground’ the front.”

 From the side, the silhouette is a classic GT coupé form with a long bonnet, swept-back windscreen and cabin rearward. But it’s the cocooning metal rear that is the stand-out touch and made distinctive and original through its wraparound horizontal strike-through graphic.

Within that silhouette, the large 23-inch wheels and long 3200mm wheelbase play a key part in its stance, as does the almost one-metre (90cm) length between the centre of the front wheel and the bottom of the dashboard, that Jaguar’s designers and PRs refer to as the ‘luxury gap’ but which many – perhaps more senior – car designers will know as relevant to an often desirable longer ‘dash-to-axle’ distance, in relation to the total car’s length. 

This lengthy gap is emphasised by the placement of the brass-effect Jaguar leaper plaque behind the front wheel arch (actually anodised aluminium, but still real metal) and is justified as more than just a branding flourish. “Look at how clean the design is, the flush glazing and flush door handles. There is no superfluous ornament,” Andreev declared. “This brass-inspired finisher has our hallmark of provenance, but as a detail, it also emphasises and celebrates the length of that luxury gap. It points to the big picture, which is the proportion of the car.”

From the rear three-quarter angle – arguably the car’s most distinctive view – the very slim horizontal tail-lights illuminate on demand but their casings are hidden from view when not required, in a similar trick to the rear lights on sister brand Range Rover’s Mk5. “We’ve gone to great lengths to integrate the active source so you can only see the lights when needed, he said. “The reason we do that is to keep this whole panel clean and further emphasise the strike-through graphic. It makes the car instantly recognisable at rest or when driving away.”

The five-year project, internally dubbed Project Renaissance, started in 2021 and sports an equally dramatic interior design. As explained in greater detail in our latest Interior Motives Autumn/Winter 2026 cover story, the Type 01 has a four-seat layout dissected by a prominent front-to-back central spine (just like the December 2024 Jaguar Type 00 concept that prefaced it). Sitting inside, space upfront is good but room in the rear is tricky to access due to slim rear doors compromised by both the low roof and the rear wheel arch’s front edge. Once inside, the rear space is snug, cocooning and high quality, but pretty tight (for two six-footers at least).

The chief interior designer for the Type 01, Tom Holden wasn’t around at the start of the project, but he has had responsibility in bringing it to market. And while he tacitly admits the rear space is small, he says the exterior ‘wow factor’ had to be preserved at all costs. “With that exterior proportion, there’s an understanding of what it is realistically going to offer in terms of interior package,” he said honestly. “But because we knew the other products we had planned, it wasn’t like this car had to tick every single box, because as soon as you start doing that, you end up with a very generic car.”

“At the same time, there are lots of little tricks we did to open up the space,” he continued. “The centre console ‘floats’ through the car, and the way the door surfaces are scalloped maximises the space that is there.”

Meanwhile, the interior package has been spatially optimised by new patented packaging tech, allowing some of the battery cells to be situated further forward than in conventional EVs. This then allowed space to be carved out for a rear passenger footwell to keep the roof height low and sloping, still achieve a circa 400-mile EV range and position all seats low-down with decent head and foot room.

The approach to the cabin’s screens and sizes is also radical. True, there is still one large 24-inch driver display behind the steering wheel with short-cut buttons on its outer edges, but there is no additional large centre screen to dominate the dashboard (and cabin experience). Instead, a much smaller portrait-shaped glass-covered display on the raised central spine offers regularly used functions easily accessible by driver or passenger via smartphone-familiar swipe, drag and zoom finger movements.

The real-time streaming of rearward video to aid the driver to see what is behind the Type 01’s glassless metal back is also innovative. Instead of multiple screens or one housed up-close in an otherwise conventional rear-view mirror, there is instead just one small screen at the base of the windscreen in the centre to avoid eye strain from rapid back-and-forth multi-distance focusing. Jaguar’s engineers say that AI will play a meaningly functional role in the car’s interactive abilities with its users too, allowing more natural and joined-up speech to be recognised and acted upon among other improvements.

Beyond engineering tech, the Type 01’s colours, materials and finishes collectively display great flair and attention to detail. The aforementioned brass detailing on the exterior is also used within the interior as characterful and unusually surfaced accents; large-section seat coverings with reduced sew and cut lines elevate the seats to something more akin to luxury domestic lounge chairs; speakers are minimised to reduce visual clutter, most are housed within a slim soundbar at the interior base of the windscreen; and materials from Kvadrat and Ultrafabrics are innovative in their composition and placement.

All round, the Type 01, with its production-ready shut-lines, slim but credible panel gaps – and double charging ports, one on each side for convenience – seems so much more convincing than the Type 00 that preceded it. Even when viewed up close as a full-size model with a stylish concept interior and working doors, the Type 00 always felt too much like a model to be believable.

It’s all a long way from November 2024 too, when Jaguar stopped selling new cars in its home market altogether just weeks before its highly controversial marketing re-brand video – featuring zero cars and only brightly-outfitted and unconventional models populating a pink lunar landscape with the sign-off strapline ‘Copy Nothing’. That move almost caused the internet to melt in a (mainly) public backlash with headlines and sometimes unpleasantly heated debate that stretched well beyond the car media world (in a way only the Ferrari Luce EV’s launch has matched since).

But that same ‘Copy Nothing’ creative brief set out at the start of the process by then design leader Gerry McGovern (now solo) and carried out with significant input from second-in-command Massimo Frascella (now Audi) can clearly be seen in the design cues of both interior and exterior. While the final execution is someone else’s job –and JLR still doesn’t have a recognised overall head of design to lead it – the final Type 01’s proposition is genuinely exciting, brave and new. Quite the turnaround then, although the proof will come in seeing and driving the final production car on the road in 2027 and whether sales follow.