[Jelle v/d Meer]

Received invite from my dealer to attend a Jaguar I-pace Evening on Thursday 5th of July - pretty much an early showroom peak for the dealer's customers and future I-pace owners.

The message indicated that the dealer would have "I-pace introduction days" July 6th and 7th for all and everyone to come see in the Netherlands.
Quite funny to have to wait 3 months after you placed your order to see the car yourself and then wait a further 5 months before you get your own.

 

[Jaap]

Got my invite also. Good to see it in real life. Delivery is scheduled for December.

 

[mikew]

I haven't heard anything since my dealer had a car in for viewing only (like they all did). It was just for a single day and was a while ago now. They have said they will be in touch to arrange a test drive for me when their demonstrator arrives. Expected in July... no firmer than that. My car is expected last week in August/first week in September.

 

[ACB1]

I have a invitation also for july 5 in Utrecht (NL).

 

[stefxx]

Seems like all Dutch dealers are organizing a VIP evening at the same time. I got an invitation for July 5th in Amsterdam.

 

[Jan073]

Indeed, 5th July in Den Bosch as well

 

[mclarenpaul]

I have an invitation for 5th July in Belgium (Arlon) or in Luxembourg on 6th and 7th July in the showroom.

 

[dr.tube]

Also got an invitation from my Rotterdam bases dealer for 5/6/7 July.

But the mail also says:

Bent u verhinderd voor dit unieke evenement? Uiteraard zal de nieuwe I-PACE ook na deze dagen in onze showroom te bewonderen zijn.

Translated in English: also after these days the new I-Pace will be shown in our showroom.

 

[MartijnEV]

I also received the invite for the VIP evening July 5th at Munsterhuis Exclusief, Hengelo.
We will also have test drives the week after next.
My i-Pace will be produced August 24th and will be ready for delivery a couple of weeks after that.

 

[Raeth]

Just returned from the "VIP" event. Was excited to finally get to see and experience the car (sort of, as we could not drive it). I went away feeling strangely underwhelmed with the car. Not sure if it is the overall bulky looks, the color I chose (photon "red" = orange) or the slow mediasystem (that already looks/feels a bit dated), lack of sunscreen with pana roof or lack of rear windscreen wiper (I really don't get this).

I can still change the color of the car but only to funeral black or garbage bag grey and hopefully they are able to optimize the mediasystem. Maybe my expectations were to high after all the (very)positive review/video's. I will certainly go back shortly and have another look.

 

[Jelle v/d Meer]

Also just returned and very happy to have seen and touched the car - very happy I choose the I-pace over the model S.
Very pleased with the comfortable chairs - sports seats are better for my body than performance seats.

That said I also drove home a bit underwhelmed - bulky from the outside and smaller than thought on the inside. The under the rear seats storage compartments are too small for normal sized laptops, the center console is kind of in the way of your right knee during cruisemode. Headroom is less than what I picked up from the reviews, certainly in the back, guess I am taller than the reporters with 1.92m.

The boot storage certainly doesn't look to be 656l not sure how that got measured - the boot of my Skoda Octavia Combi looks bigger and is suppose to have 610l.

They had 2 cars - a FE in photon red and a S version (€102k so pretty much max spec) in Ceasium blue. That ceasium blue looked really really good - might have to change from my Firenze red - first need to find a dealer that will have a Firenze red available for test drive and see colour in daylight.

 

[pebell]

@Raeth, @Jelle, I share your sentiments! I drove home - in my Model S - feeling underwhelmed too. For the exact same reasons: bulky on the outside, not that spacious at all on the inside, smaller and lower than I had hoped, small boot, infotainment system that feels like you're back in 2009, even slower to respond than I feared.

I am booking a testdrive and hope the ride at least is "next level" compared to my five year old Model S. But that overwhelming feeling that I had when I first got the MS, that sensation that I had "arrived in the future", well, I kinda had that all over again when I got back in my car yesterday evening - after stepping out of a brand new so called "tesla killer".

I guess there are two things I need to separate. The car is much smaller, in _every aspect_, than the Model S (let alone the Model X, why Jaguar invited comparisons with that car by pitting them against each other in a drag race will forever be lost on me). But that smaller size is not a fault, just a fact, a choice. When I got the MS I always said that everything about it was great, but I would have preferred it if it was a bit more compact. Now, after five years, I notice that its dimension have become "the norm" for me. I'm sure that after a while, I will be fine with the more compact dimensions of the I-Pace. So I'll do my best to let that go.

But with respect to the infotainment system, my worst fears came through. Not only is it mindboggingly slow (I had heard of one second delays, in real life it feels even more than that for some operations), it also looks outdated. It would even compare unfavourably with the BMW i-Drive system I had 9 years ago. Compared to the Tesla? INCOMPARABLE, even to the version it came with 5 years ago, before all the OTA improvements. And I am not talking about the size of the MS's touch screen, I actually agree with many critics that it is not the most ergonomical solution. I am totally fine with the I-Pace's physical buttons and multiple smaller screens - it's just what is displayed on them that feels like a timewarp in the wrong direction.

Actually.. Now that I rethink this, it's not all the screens. The bottom screen, that mainly does the climate settings, is actually fine. It looks and feels more contemporary, it doesn't lag nearly as bad, it's pretty nice actually. But the main screen, with the infotainment, navigation and general settings, ouch...

Were there any positives? Well, I found the FE 20" wheels gorgeous in real life, and the HUD promises to be very nice.

Like I said, I will book a testdrive and hope the ride convinces me. If it doesn't, I might make someone on the waiting list very happy. Because the list of downsides is significant: much smaller for both passengers and cargo, impaired charging, much less range considering the battery size, crappy infotainment that I fear is beyond the power of OTA updates to repair. The ride has to really convince - and that is not that easy. Nowadays it seems all the rage to criticise Tesla's ride qualities, but 5 years ago the entire auto press raved about the unbelievable ride the Tesla offered, making everything else on the road feel like a coal train. The rest of the playing field hasn't improved that much since, and although I am sure Jaguar managed to step things up, I don't think it will be by a landslide.

 

[pivoking]

Ouch. Somewhere in the coming weeks I will have my real life test drive. I was full of confidence after the press reviews but your reviews are a bit frightening.... how hard can it be to add an up to date entertainment system in a car this important for jaguar ?!

 

[pebell]

Ouch. Somewhere in the coming weeks I will have my real life test drive. I was full of confidence after the press reviews but your reviews are a bit frightening.... how hard can it be to add an up to date entertainment system in a car this important for jaguar ?!

i understand your sentiments. But I guess you can't compare our "reviews" with the press reviews. They saw the car in it's natural environment, out there in the world, had the car to themselves for quite some time, and of course, they actually drove it. Many of them mentioned the unimpressive infotainment system to, but as sideline. We, on the other hand, saw the car indoors, with dozens of people surrounding the car at all times, with little else to focus on than the aspects that, perhaps, aren't really that important in the total picture.

I guess I'm telling myself as much as I'm telling you

 

[johnd]

Let's not forget the speculation that the firmware running the infotainment system in Portugal etc might well have been a pre-production beta version and so containing a lot of extra troubleshooting code that won't be in the final production version. One effect of this can be to significantly slow down response times. There are also reports that work is continuing to improve and refine the menu structure. Of course the basic ICE system is fixed (eg CPU power and speed) and only minor revisions to the code are likely to be possible at this stage but it may well be that no-one has yet seen the final production version of the ICE code. (Presumably one of the benefits of using software, especially combined with OTA updates, is that updates can continue to be be developed on an ongoing basis.)

So the above is just speculation but sounds plausible to me, especially if delivery dates are slipping by a month or two.

 

[pebell]

Ouch. Somewhere in the coming weeks I will have my real life test drive. I was full of confidence after the press reviews but your reviews are a bit frightening.... how hard can it be to add an up to date entertainment system in a car this important for jaguar ?!

I understand your sentiments. But I guess you can't compare our "reviews" with the press reviews. They saw the car in its natural environment, out there in the world, had the car to themselves for quite some time, and of course, they actually drove it. Many of them mentioned the unimpressive infotainment system too, but as sideline. We, on the other hand, saw the car indoors, with dozens of people surrounding the car at all times, with little else to focus on than the aspects that, perhaps, aren't really that important in the total picture.

I guess I'm telling myself as much as I'm telling you

Still, I feel there were three mistakes Jaguar made with this car that could have easily been avoided:

1. Design and write better software, but AT LEAST put some hardware in the car that can run it with two fingers up its nose - not hardware that is struggling to show an animation on the screen while it's doing something useful behind the scenes at the same time.

2. Take charging as seriously as range. They are, after all, two sides to the same coin. With all the effort they put in to make the car as efficient as possible, they should have taken a good look at all the charging infrastructure in the world, and made sure their car could always draw as much power as there is available. One third of all public chargers in Europe are in the tiny Netherlands; together with Norway we are way ahead on the road to electrificatiion, but Jaguar puts a charger in the car that is by definition only capable of using a third of the power these chargers have available. It's a huge difference if you need to charge 3 hours or 9 hours for the same amount of energy/range.

3. They shouldn't have called it an SUV, and MOST CERTAINLY they should have never pitted it against a Model X. That car is vastly bigger than a Model S, just as the Model S is vastly bigger than the I-Pace. They are literally two leagues apart, they have nothing in common. Especially in a time where few people have access to the car itself, it sets expectations that can't be met and are bound to lead to disappointment.

 

[Tophe74]

- u can use 2 fingers for zooming maps.
- they didn t compare interior with model X or S. Just a drag race. But yes was pitty.
- here in France most of ppl don t have 3 phases and max power at home is between 8kw and 15kw so am fine with charging. But yes they should have took in concern all the countries in the world.
- for the entertainment, don t forget u can set a shortcut for all the functions u need. So no need to go deep in menus each time. I think its not the best but not that outdated. I had a bmw 335i in 2010 and even if the idrive was fast and simple it was very poor looking on screen. Not even close from the I pace number of functions.

 

[Blackseries]

3. They shouldn't have called it an SUV, and MOST CERTAINLY they should have never pitted it against a Model X. That car is vastly bigger than a Model S, just as the Model S is vastly bigger than the I-Pace. They are literally two leagues apart, they have nothing in common. Especially in a time where few people have access to the car itself, it sets expectations that can't be met and are bound to lead to disappointment.

I could be wrong but as a very small company, in the car world, JLR have to be very smart when they spend their advertising money.
If the day of the launch they had pitted the I-Pace against probably its natural competitor the BMW X4 or X6 do you think they would have got the worldwide exposure they did pitting it against a Tesla. The I-Pace against the Model X was everywhere on 2nd March, Tesla fans were outraged - I'm sure that was the reason it was done …… and it worked.
The very first time I saw the I-Pace concept I thought the car should have been called the I-Type not I-Pace and if anyone in the world cross shops a Tesla Model X for an I-Pace I would be very much surprised indeed.
I think the reality, whilst on this forum some Model S owners are thinking about changing thier S's for the I-Pace, the vast maority of I-Pace owners will be, like me, coming from the ICE world because a Tesla does not appeal as its either too big, not availble or they prefer a more ICE like interior. The EV market is so small at the moment and choice is so restricted that there is an element of compromise in most peoples decisions. For me I would prefer the I-Pace boot to be more e-Tron shaped ie higher, but I don't want a 4.9m car plus I want my new electric car to look like the future (not wacky) just the future ......… not the past - so to get an EV with a V8 bonnet of empty space seems a bit daft to me.

 

[fideba2]

Just spent about 15 minutes in the car, fiddling with the entertainment system. Keep in mind that the car wasn't driving, so some features weren't available . Some remarks:
- yes, it's slow. However, it doesn't seem unusable slow. It is very comparable to what I have in my 2015 XE right now. Which is slow . But, it's ok to use.
- some features seem to "hang" when selecting (showing the known Jaguar 4 box "hourglass". Maybe because the car wasn't moving
- main issue is a lack of "wow" factor. I expected a lot of new things, but saw mostly more of the same
- some things are just badly implemented. 360 view of the car is the most striking one. The image of the car is very small. Selecting cameras very un-intuitive. I'm seriously doubting if this is really usuable
- Searching for charging points was actually pretty fast. I was pleasantly surprised to see that for most charging points, it also showed if the point was available or not

I really doubt if a firmware update will tackle the responsiveness. In my (quite extensive) experience with updates on IT systems, it is extremely rare to have improved speed (unless it's the switch from a debug version to an actual production version). In almost 100% of the updates, things slow down...
I've recently been fiddling with the Audi MMI system in the new A6, and, while I do think the interior design of the Jaguar is far superior in looks, boy, what a difference in usability and features (haptic feedback ! satellite view ! ...) Sorry to say, but the Jag's system does seem 5 years old.
I'll drive the car in a few days, hopefully that will change my mind...

 

[Raeth]

I've been back today for a second look after the VIP evening. There were less people so had more time to take in the exterior and especially the interior, including the multimedia system. However, I keep feeling underwhelmed, it's missing (for me) the wow factor both interior and exterior.

I really want to like the car and have gone back to several review videos but I just dont get the same enthusiasm as (most) reviewers. I've never owned a "premium" car before, so maybe my expectations are too high for a 100k+ car or I just don't "get it". More importantly, I've not driven the I-Pace and thus not fully experienced it, but it would need to be really great. As it stands now, I plan to make someone on the waitinglist very happy. However, I planned a testdrive for Thursday to convince me otherwise.