The first Ingenium to go into volume production will be a 2.0-liter diesel known as AJ200D, which is not only light but also has 17% less friction than Jaguar's current engine. Due to the family's modular nature, gas versions are soon to follow.
Building an all-aluminum 3-Series fighter is one thing, but in order to succeed in the long run, Jaguar Land Rover also needed to invest in their own engine technology as opposed to using a lot of worked-over Ford engines.
The new Wolverhampton plant is the first the company has built from the ground up and it will cost them more than $855 million and will create almost 1400 new jobs by the time it reaches full capacity. JLR also spent $68 million on the Powertrain Engineering facility at its Whitley Technical Centre.
Jaguar says the in-house developed Ingenium family is very flexible and achieves exceptional power and low emissions through patented technologies that reduce friction and weight. They also say an Ingenium engine can be up to 176 pounds lighter than current engines, which should make room for all the leather and electronics.
The common diesel and petrol architecture also makes manufacturing easier, meaning engines can reach the market at greater speed. Being scalable, the family will also work with all JLR vehicles including rear-, all- and four-wheel drive cars and hybrid drivetrains.
The compact aluminum blocks share the same bore, stroke, cylinder spacing and 500cc cylinder capacity. All engines will be turbocharged with central direct high-pressure fuel injection, variable valve timing and start-stop technology.
Other details include roller bearings on cam and balancer shafts instead of machined-in bearing surfaces, computer-controlled variable oil and water pumps, a split circuit cooling system enabling fast warm ups, a simplified cam drive system, crankshafts that are offset from the centre of the block and electronically controlled piston cooling jets to improve efficiency in the oil pumping circuit.
Jaguar Land Rover will not take any chances with this one:
Being configurable and flexible are the two key strands of Ingenium's DNA because we have future-proofed our new engines from the outset. Ingenium will be able to accept new advances in fuel, turbocharging, emissions, performance and electrification technologies when they are ready and accessible to be deployed.
Ingenium will also come to market as one of the most tested and proven Jaguar Land Rover engines ever. Before the first Ingenium engine is sold, it will have already undergone the equivalent of more than eight years of the toughest, most punishing testing that Jaguar Land Rover engineers could devise. These tests include a huge range of integrity and durability testing, including more than 72,000 hours of dyno testing and 2 million miles of real-world testing to ensure these engines deliver – and continue to deliver.
Very nice, but here's hoping they still deliver supercharged V8s. We love those.