Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) will slash 1,000 jobs at its car-building factory in Solihull due to deflated demand for diesel cars.
All job losses at the West Midlands site have been limited to contract workers and the announcements come after JLR said it would reduce productivity at its Halewood plant in Merseyside, amid uncertainty over Brexit and changes to taxes on diesel cars.
Sales of Jaguar cars are down by 26 per cent in the first quarter of this year, compared to the first three months of 2017, while Land Rover sales have slumped by 20 per cent.
Some 10,000 people are employed at JLR’s Solihull factory, which currently produces the Range Rover, Range Rover Sport, Land Rover Discovery, Jaguar F-Pace and Range Rover Velar.
More than 90 per cent of JLR models are fuelled by diesel, so with diesel car sales down by more than a third across the industry, the car maker has been particularly affected.
However, Jaguar did recently reveal the all-electric I-Pace SUV and JLR has plans to offer pure-electric or hybrid variants of every model by around 2021. That said, JLR has been considerably slower on the uptake of electric powertrains compared to most other brands.