Jaguar Land Rover Goes Headhunting

Tata Motors has been hunting for a new CEO at Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), and new reports claim the search is narrowing in scope. At the start of 2020, the company announced that Ralf Speth would step down as chief executive in September, and that the quest for his replacement had begun — though it technically began in 2019.

We’ve since learned he will stick around as non-executive vice-chairman of JLR and supervise the transition of leadership, with details now emerging about his likely successor. It’s a clever way of keeping him around as he ages into retirement at 65 years, as per the parent company’s corporate policy.

According to the Financial Times, Tata has narrowed it down to three candidates. Internally, JLR seems as though it would like to promote its engineering lead, Nick Rogers. But former Audi CEO Bram Schot and BMW development boss Klaus Fröhlich are also under consideration, in addition to Fred Schulze — Audi’s product line manager at the Ingolstadt plant.

Read more
  • Alan As the established auto manufacturers become better at producing EVs I think Tesla will lay off more workers.In 2019 Tesla held 81% of the US EV market. 2023 it has dwindled to 54% of the US market. If this trend continues Tesla will definitely downsize more.There is one thing that the established auto manufacturers do better than Tesla. That is generate new models. Tesla seems unable to refresh its lineup quick enough against competition. Sort of like why did Sears go broke? Sears was the mail order king, one would think it would of been easier to transition to online sales. Sears couldn't adapt to on line shopping competitively, so Amazon killed it.
  • Alan I wonder if China has Great Wall condos?
  • Alan This is one Toyota that I thought was attractive and stylish since I was a teenager. I don't like how the muffler is positioned.
  • ToolGuy The only way this makes sense to me (still looking) is if it is tied to the realization that they have a capital issue (cash crunch) which is getting in the way of their plans.
  • Jeff I do think this is a good thing. Teaching salespeople how to interact with the customer and teaching them some of the features and technical stuff of the vehicles is important.