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An SUV works its way through the inspection light booth of Halewood’s paint shop facility, where it’s assessed for cleanliness under fluorescent tubes.
Transforming a car manufacturing plant entering its seventh decade into a futureproof facility, ready for AI-powered autonomous driving, comes with natural challenges. Among them: 1960s architecture drawings—and the imperial system. “We had to survey everything and go out with the tape measure,” explains Dan Ford, site director at Jaguar Land Rover’s (JLR) site in Halewood, Merseyside, England. “But the drawing’s measurements were off: we struck a drainpipe.”
Besides that minor bump in the road (the Great British weather and an August downpour meant work was delayed by 48 hours), JLR’s £250 million ($323.4 million) upgrade of its Halewood plant has been smooth. Off the River Mersey, 10 miles from Liverpool, Halewood has long been synonymous with the British car industry—and JLR is the UK’s largest automotive employer. (The company's controversial Jaguar Type 00 will be built at a different factory in Solihull). Opened in 1963 by Ford of Britain to build the Anglia (the small family saloon starred as the flying car in the Harry Potter series), plans to transform the plant began in late 2020. Ford’s team ditched the tape measure for a digital twin, scanning 1,000 sqm (10,764 sq ft) of footprint, floor to ceiling, every weekend.
An ABB robot in the new extension ensures door faces are clean of debris before they pass through laser alignment.
Halewood has now been modded for cars of the future. A fleet of 750 robots (“our version of the Terracotta Army,” says Ford), laser alignment technology, and cloud-based infrastructure join 3,500 JLR employees on the factory floor, expanded by 32,364 sqm (348,363 sq ft) to produce the manufacturer’s next-generation vehicles. New calibration rigs measure the responsiveness of a vehicle’s advanced driver-assistance systems, such as its cameras and sensors. Safety levels can be calibrated for future autonomous driving, says Ford.
The first stage in Halewood’s redevelopment was its new body shop, with two floors separated by 2.5 meters (eight feet) of concrete to account for heavy machinery, capable of producing 500 vehicle bodies per day. The new build line is now in the commissioning stage: pre-production electrified medium-sized SUVs are set to be tested through 2025. Forty new autonomous mobile robots now assist Halewood employees with fitting high-voltage batteries. Other additions include a £10 million ($12.9 million) automated painted body storage tower, stacking up to 600 vehicles, retrieved by cranes for just-in-time customer orders.
A handheld microscope is used for a paint surface inspection, a final audit assessing depth coverage and quality.
Halewood is JLR’s first all-electric facility. The UK government’s zero emission vehicle mandate, part of its plan to transition to a net-zero economy, became effective at the beginning of 2024—22 per cent of all new car sales must be zero emission. The law has forced the industry to effectively fast-track electric vehicle production, up to an effective ban on the sale of new petrol cars by 2035; the EU has similar regulations in place. Each of JLR’s luxury marques will have a pure electric model by 2030, with the Range Rover Electric set for pre-order (the company’s only available battery-electric vehicle, the Jaguar I-Pace, launched in 2018, is being discontinued).
A high payload robot with black pneumatic suction cups ready to pick up a vehicle hood; surrounding pneumatic clasps secure the panel in place.
The plant’s final production line is now also 50 per cent longer, with 6km (3.7mi) to accommodate battery fitting. All-electric vehicles will be produced in parallel with JLR plug-in hybrids, like the Land Rover Discovery Sport and Range Rover Evoque, and its internal combustion engines. Traditionally, petrol cars are built around the engine, with full-vehicle length components: a drive shaft, fuel lines, and exhaust systems. But electric vehicles have a very different build, says Ford. “The battery goes in much later during the production process—electric drive units go onto front and rear subframes, with a large battery in the middle. That’s why we had to expand our production line, spread the process out, and keep our battery electric vehicles separate.”
JLR aims to be carbon-net zero by 2039. As a result, the manufacturer, part of Indian conglomerate Tata, says its £250 million investment in Halewood is set to double over the following years. The focus on electric energy and renewables will wipe 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) from the plant’s industrial footprint. Ford says plans include installing 18,000 solar panels, capable of producing 8,600 GWh—equivalent to 10 per cent of the site’s energy consumption.
A bird’s eye of the £250 million, 32,364 sqm body shop extension. The perimeter includes the original Halewood plant; the factory complex is shared with Ford.
But some new features are in the name of aesthetics, not sustainability. Nearly one mile of Halewood’s paint shop has been modified: the expansion of ovens and conveyors follows growing consumer demand for contrasting-color roofs; curing creates the premium finish. This meant the whole plant had to be shut down for five weeks, over summer 2023. “One-and-a-half weeks was just for clean-up,” says Ford. “The paint environment has to be incredibly clean—you literally need the dust to settle, clean, then settle again.”
The droids are also accommodating the tastes of well-heeled JLR customers. “We now have robots picking up doors and measuring the [car body’s] aperture, rather than a manual cladding line,” says Ford. “The preference from a discerning customer base is tight gaps around the doors, with flush finishes. An automated system can do that with nice even gaps, all the way around.”
This article first appeared in the January/February 2025 edition of WIRED UK.