OREANDA-NEWS. Jaguar Land Rover confirms its commitment to research and development in the UK, with a multi-million pound investment in a new technology, innovation and education centre at the University of Warwick.

National Automotive Innovation Campus (NAIC) construction begins in September 2014.

The facility will open in 2016 and Jaguar Land Rover will double the size of its advanced research team.

Jaguar Land Rover has unveiled details of its future plans for advanced research and development in the UK, which will now be focused on a new, cutting-edge technology, innovation and education centre in Warwick.

NAIC, University of Warwick

NAIC is designed to create a large-scale collaborative research environment. It will bring academics from the UK’s leading universities together with researchers and engineers from Jaguar Land Rover and its supply chain, in a single, multi-purpose, state-of-the-art research facility.

Jaguar Land Rover is the lead partner in the project, investing ?50m, along with Tata Motors European Technical Centre, Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) and the UK Government’s Higher Education Funding Council England.

Construction of the nearly ?100m NAIC is scheduled to begin in September 2014 at the University of Warwick. Around 1,000 academics, researchers, technologists and engineers will work in the building, which will feature engineering workshops and laboratories, advanced powertrain facilities and the latest advanced design, visualisation and rapid prototyping technologies.

The development of the new facility, which will complement Jaguar Land Rover’s product creation centres in Gaydon and Whitley, will be co-ordinated by Dr Wolfgang Epple, Jaguar Land Rover’s director of research and technology. In this new, board-level role, Dr Epple is leading Jaguar Land Rover’s innovation and advanced research initiatives and has been appointed a honorary fellow at WMG.

Dr Epple said: “Investing in collaboration, innovation, research and education is vital if we want to be on par with our international competitors. Our future sales success, the success of our global business - and the UK economy - lies in the engineering and innovation that will take place in NAIC.

“Creating a new national focus for automotive research and consolidating Jaguar Land Rover’s growing research and advanced engineering operations in one centre offers us huge potential. With a critical mass of research capability, we will put the UK at the very centre of the global automotive industry - with the NAIC at its hub.”

The development of the NAIC project is the next stage in Jaguar Land Rover’s long-term research strategy and builds on the success Jaguar Land Rover has enjoyed as part of its long-standing relationship with WMG at the University of Warwick. Nearly 200 Jaguar Land Rover researchers and engineers are currently based at WMG, collaborating with university experts on a number of projects.

Jaguar Land Rover expects that it will more than double the size of its advanced research team to 500 people by the time the NAIC opens in 2016.

Antony Harper, Jaguar Land Rover’s head of research, said: “We will announce the details of the specific research projects on which our NAIC research team will collaborate in due course, but these will be long-term, multi-disciplinary challenges - such as electrification, smart and connected cars and human machine interface - which will help us create some key new technologies that will deliver a low-carbon future.

“These collaborative research programmes will harness the best of UK engineering innovation, and with the extra capability NAIC gives us, you can expect that the number and range of new, fresh innovative ideas that we patent, and then take to production in the future, will increase significantly.”

As well as the skills and knowledge that will be developed within these research projects, NAIC will have a key role in developing the skills of schoolchildren and engineering students, who will be able to use NAIC’s laboratories and a dedicated engineering education facility.

Dr Epple added: “Economic growth can only be sustained if we and our suppliers can find the right quality and quantity of skilled people. We need to ensure that we are inspiring people to consider engineering and encourage a passion for science, technology and maths from a young age.

“The NAIC will become a centre of training and skills to help ensure we have enough young people wanting to develop a career in engineering and manufacturing. NAIC will also play a key role in nurturing the next generation of engineers and technologists.”