JLR plant shares its secrets with other automakers

While corporate security is usually a big topic for automakers, England’s Solihull assembly plant that belongs to Jaguar Land Rover is doing the contrary – sharing its knowledge surrounding the manufacturing of aluminum-bodied vehicles.

Because of this open sharing, naturally many interested executives from other automakers – ranging from Audi, Mercedes to Ford, have become regular visitors at the plant, as the company openly discloses details about its patents in the hope that industry wide standards would save it money in the distant future. The simple idea behind this is that unless big players adopt the same procedures for raw materials and tools needed to build aluminium cars, costs are not likely to go down.

“Mercedes-Benz was here [four] months ago, and we are going to see their S class on a return visit,” said Mark White, Jaguar Land Rover’s chief technical specialist for aluminium. “They were very impressed with what they saw. And they took a lot of things we do away. Audi was here twice so far, and we are doing some work with them. I am going to see the A8 and I have an open invitation to see the Q7,” he said.

The Jaguar Land Rover specialist also says that currently, automakers – like Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, and soon Ford – building aluminium cars all using slightly different manufacturing systems. That includes things like different types of aluminium grades, rivets, glue, robots or even measuring systems.