New Jaguar E-Pace – pictures and all we know so far

The E-Pace will be Jag’s contender in the small premium SUV market, competing with the Audi Q3, Range Rover Evoque and BMW X1

Jaguar’s relentless product expansion is set to continue, with a new, compact SUV on the cards – named the E-Pace.  Situated below the larger F-Pace in Jag’s range, the E-Pace will mirror its larger sibling and straddle market segments, sitting between an Audi Q3 and Audi Q5 size-wise. 

Now, Jaguar has released some new pictures, along with a few details on how the company is putting the car through its E-paces (geddit?) in a gruelling testing regime designed to push the car to its limits. Jag says that it’s produced 150 E-Pace prototypes for the testing procedure, which includes extensive hot and cold-weather testing – in temperatures as hot as 48 degrees C, and as low as minus 48 degrees. It’s also been altitude tested at up to 5000 feet above sea level. Jaguar says that the total testing programme has encompassed over 120,000 hours, with 500 engineers working on the car to ensure it fulfils its brief.

During the testing, Jag engineers also drove the car into a wading pool filled with water to the depth of 0.5m. They turned the engine off, opened the doors, and promptly went for lunch, leaving the car for an hour, before starting it up and driving it back off afterwards.

Of interest from an evo perspective is a serious amount of track time included in the testing. Jaguar says the E-Pace prototypes have completed ‘more than 400’ laps of the Nurburgring. Interestingly, Jaguar calls the E-Pace a ‘compact performance SUV’ in the latest release. Perhaps we’ll see a warmed-up ‘S’ version sooner rather than later…

The teaser images show the E-Pace in full camouflage, but previous pictures prove some of our previous expectations on the styling front have indeed been true. The new E-Pace does in fact mimic the design path led by the sportier F-Type with swept back headlights and a very similar shape to the window line. This is in contrast to the more imperial, upright stance of the larger F-Pace and treads that line of looking in line with its siblings while starting to define an aesthetic all of its own.

Hoping to build on the phenomenal success Jaguar has enjoyed with F-Pace, the E-Pace will differ in a few crucial ways. The big news is a switch from the F-Pace’s aluminium-intensive platform to one loosely shared with the Range Rover Evoque. As such, the Jaguar will share its four-cylinder-only status with the Evoque, exclusively using Jaguar’s latest range of single and twin-turbocharged Ingenium petrol and diesel engines.