In November 2019, I was overjoyed to drive a new Jaguar I-Pace off the dealer’s lot. Five years later, I’m waiting for Jaguar to drive the car away.
After two recalls for software updates, the car’s range is now permanently restricted to 80 percent of what it was new. And along with owners of over 2,700 2019 I-Paces, I’m waiting for Jaguar to buy the car back. That’s because the company has decided that purchasing the cars is cheaper—and likely easier—than identifying and replacing defective battery packs. It’s a frustrating situation to be in, and not just because I can no longer drive a car I have grown to like.
Why did I buy an I-Pace? Good question—after all, Jaguars are not renowned for being paragons of reliability. 2019 was also the first year for the I-Pace, and buying a car in its first model can be a risky move as unanticipated manufacturing and parts problems rear their heads. One example: The original wiring harness in the I-Pace was poorly designed, so Jaguar ended up replacing many of them (including mine), which the mechanic told me took 11 hours and involved disassembling the front of the car.
Other factors in the purchase were the usual ones: how the car looks, how it drives, and how far it goes. The I-Pace stood out on range, in particular. The market currently offers a wide range of electric vehicles, running the gamut from the tiny Fiat 500e to the truly massive Hummer H3. But the EV landscape of 2019 was much different. With range as my top priority, the only options with well over 200 miles (320 km) were Tesla vehicles, the Chevy Bolt, and the I-Pace.
Back in 2019, Elon Musk was just a weird guy whose companies built rockets and EVs. But my reluctance to buy a Tesla was due to quality control problems and a lackluster interior for the price.
We had been saving for a long time and were ready to take the EV plunge, and I had spent a couple of weeks driving the I-Pace for a review. I came away impressed with the range and driving experience, so an I-Pace was the clear and obvious choice. The fact that it was the 2019 World Car of the Year didn’t hurt, either.
The ownership experience has been up and down. One highlight was a software update that increased range from 234 miles (376 km) to 243 miles (391 km). Other upsides have been that it’s a really fun car to drive and I have a great service department at my Jaguar-Land Rover dealership (although when I brought my car in for the range-limiting software update, the service department was completely unaware of the buyback). On the opposite end of the ledger are things like the slowwwwww infotainment system and the amount of time (easily over two months in the first four years of ownership) that the car has spent at the dealership instead of in my garage.
But the biggest downer is the fact that my I-Pace display currently shows 165 miles of range instead of the 195–205 miles I have seen in previous Februarys.
How did we get here?
At the heart of the problem are the cells that make up the I-Pace’s 90 kWh battery pack. Manufactured by an LG factory in Poland, some of the battery cells have “characteristics of a folded anode tab on the anode,” as Jaguar described the issue in a recall notice. Folded anode tabs can lead to thermal overload, which in turn can cause fires. From launch to the end of 2024, Jaguar sold 10,183 I-Paces in total. Eight of the 2,500+ I-Paces sold in the US in 2019 caught on fire by the end of 2023, according to JLR. While that may seem like a small figure, the correct number of EVs that should spontaneously combust is zero.
Jaguar is not the only carmarker suffering from LG’s quality control problems—this is the same issue GM faced with the Chevy Bolt in 2021, which resulted in the carmaker recalling every last Bolt to replace the batteries at a cost of $1.8 billion. Volkswagen is also dealing with the fallout, recalling some Audi e-trons and capping their charge level at 80 percent. Some Hyundai Kona EVs and Chrysler Pacifica PHEVs were affected, too.
Jaguar’s initial attempt at a fix came in May 2023. Recall H441 updated the software for the Battery Energy Control Module to better detect problems within the battery cells to hopefully prevent cases of combustion. Jaguar also said it would replace battery modules “as necessary.” H441 covered all I-Paces manufactured to that point.
Just five months later, Jaguar issued recall H459. This one was for about 500 vehicles where recall H441 didn’t take. With H459, Jaguar warned owners of the affected vehicles to both park and charge their cars away from structures for 30 days after the recall was completed.
“Don’t park and charge in your garage” is a big ask for an EV owner. Imagine being told you can only gas up your car far outside the canopy covering the gas pumps. I have an Electrify America charger mounted to the wall, and the cable isn’t long enough to charge a car outside the garage. I also live on a busy street with no outlets on the front of my house. Parking and charging away from structures made at-home charging challenging, to say the least.
The recalls kept coming, covering 100 I-Paces, then 258, and ultimately 2,760 MY2019 cars sold in the US. And each recall notice painted a more disturbing picture. In March 2024, owners targeted by the H484 recall were told they should only charge their car to 75 percent capacity in addition to parking away from structures. Those recall notices referred to a permanent solution without specifying what that might be—something that could be read as ominous or hopeful.
Subsequent notices sounded more concerning, with an “interim solution” of limiting charging and range to 80 percent. Recall H536 finally made it official: “As a final remedy, JLR will reacquire vehicles from affected customers. These vehicles will be held in the control of JLR until further notice.”
So I will apparently be an ex-Jaguar owner at some point in the future. Some very unknown point.
The waiting is the hardest part
Given that we know our I-Paces are doomed, owners really want to put this episode behind us and move on to new cars. But Jaguar has us in an indefinite holding pattern, and it’s frustrating.
In December, a Jaguar representative told me that a process specialist would reach out “within in the next few weeks to come to a final resolution.”
“Welp, here we are… Jan 2nd, and nothing from JLR on the buyback process or timeline,” wrote user copyNothing on the I-Pace Forum. “I hope this isn’t indicative of how things will proceed, but I’m not holding my breath that things will be easy.”
I’m not holding my breath, either. My last four emails to Jaguar—December 16, January 7, January 23, and February 12—all got the same reply: hang tight. “We do not have a current time frame for when a process specialist will reach out to you, but rest assured one will be following up with you shortly,” a Jaguar Land Rover case manager told me in an email.
A few I-Pace owners in California, which has the nation’s toughest lemon law, have reported progress with the repurchase. In the middle of January, I-Pace Forum user pan+kro posted that their buyback had been approved by JLR, and they expected to get around $38,000 for the car. This leads to another burning question.
How much for this gently used I-Pace?
The process would less nerve-wracking if we had an idea of what Jaguar will offer to buy the cars back. As with every car, each day makes the I-Pace worth a fraction less than it was the day before—after all, each time you drive your car, it depreciates in value. But mileage isn’t the only factor in determining the value of a used car.
I headed over to Edmunds.com and discovered that my I-Pace would fetch $24,428 in a private sale. Ouch.
To determine a used car’s value, Edmunds takes historical data, dealer transactions, consumer feedback, and depreciation trends into account, along with mileage. Unfortunately for me, none of those data points work in the favor of I-Pace owners. Indeed, the battery defect is a major culprit in depressing the value of 2019 I-Paces. I asked Edmunds how Jaguar might come up with a fair valuation for the buybacks, especially as its actions are responsible for helping to depress prices.
“Given the unique circumstances surrounding the 2019 Jaguar I-PACE, we’d like to note that Edmunds’ tools primarily rely on historical market data to provide a benchmark for used vehicle values,” Mitch Paul, senior manager of PR and communications for Edmunds, told me. “Events like this—where a specific model is subject to a widespread buyback—are outside the typical market conditions our tools account for.”
Jaguar’s press office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on valuation and the buyback process.
Once the I-Pace is gone, I’ll buy another EV, although the timing isn’t great. Last year, not knowing what was in store for 2019 I-Pace owners, I bought a used PHEV. I hadn’t budgeted for two car purchases within 12 months, so I’m not stoked about buying another car this year.
At least it’s a reasonably good time to buy a used EV. And there’s still an EV tax credit of up to $7,500 depending on where the car was manufactured and where its components came from. But it’s unclear how long that will exist, given the Trump administration’s hostility to EVs and green energy, not to mention the indiscriminate budget-slashing going on at the moment. Some I-Pace owners are worried that the buyback process will take so long that the tax credit will be gone by the time they get a check from JLR.
Jaguar is at a crossroads. It has gone all-in on a fully electrified future, recently showing off the Type 00, a two-door concept car with no rear window. As of last June, there have been no more new ICE Jaguars built, and none are planned for the future.
Our planet needs more EVs, so every new electric car on the road should be welcomed. But given the experience of owning Jaguar’s first EV, fans of the badge will be watching closely to see how the company resolves the problem. Doing right by the 2,760 or people who found Jaguar’s vision for electrified driving to be compelling in 2019 will go a long way toward restoring Jaguar’s credibility as it readies a second attempt at electrification.
Unfortunately, all we I-Pace owners can do is wait to see how this turns out.