FWIW, I think there are a couple of things worth noting. The first is never, ever, run a high end and very expensive to repair car without a warranty. Jaguar offer an extended warranty and as soon as my I Pace hit three years old I bought it, I'd not have dreamt of running it without, given the extremely high repair costs (which are very well known).

Secondly not getting the car serviced can impact the warranty anyway, so even if the car had been covered I think there's a chance that Jaguar might have raised this, especially if the failure of the motor and transmission unit was down to something like low lubricant levels.

When it comes to goodwill payments I think that had the car had a full and up to date service record and there was nothing to suggest damage or mistreatment then I'd have been inclined to think they perhaps should have made a contribution. Given the service history though I can see their position in not wanting to do this.

The good news is that this isn't a component that fails often and there is a very good chance that you could buy a secondhand replacement for a lot less money than Jaguar want for a new one. Only slight issue is that it will be coded to the car, so there is a fair chance that you will need a Jaguar technician with the right kit to get it to work.

 

I’d go legal on them.

 

That's shocking. I don't see how a motor can cost so much. Or why on earth they can't repair it.

 

Anyone with knowledge of Jaguar repair costs won't be particularly surprised by this. This is a company that charge over £2k for a windscreen. It's why every Jaguar forum has posts strongly suggesting taking out the (fairly costly) extended warranty, as plenty have had their fingers burned with astronomically high repair costs. There's no way I'd have run mine without the extended warranty cover, as although major faults are pretty rare their cost is such that the car could easily be written off as being not worth getting fixed.

 

Well...there is another point to be made.... JLR ends SUV production in Magna Steyr, so noone wants to take any responsibility.

JLR ends SUV production at Magna Steyr amid electric shift

Jaguar Land Rover will end production of its I-Pace and E-Pace SUVs at Magna Steyr in Austria, pivoting towards a premium all-electric future starting in 2025.

www.automotivemanufacturingsolutions.com

.

 

I don't know the mechanical layout of an iPace, perhaps Jeremy does.
If it's like the vast majority of EV's, the motor will be in the middle of the engine bay & be coupled to a reduction gearbox & differential.
Then drive the two front driveshafts from there.
Would be very surprised if vibrations from the motor would make it through to the steering.
I would still suspect the problem was with the suspension, driveshafts, intermediate bearing or wheels/ tyres.
I would take it to a known good ICE car garage & get a second opinion.

 

Any inkling of what caused the motor issue?? Any independent EV engineers in your country - Switzerland?? Perhaps call Cleevely in UK and talk to them??

 

Thanks for all the responses. Indeed it was probably quite a bit naive of us to buy an expensive luxury car second hand and without full warranty. We were so focused on the battery (which of course still has plenty warranty) that we kind of forgot about the rest of the car. Knowing that it's an expensive car, I was expecting repairs to be more costly. But simultaneously I would have expected fewer defects because on paper EVs are somehow simpler than ICE cars with fewer moving parts. So that part of the miscalculation is definitely on me and I don't hold it against Jaguar.

However, what I do not like at all is that the Jaguar dealership clearly states that during the regular services they do zero work on the motor because there is nothing to service (and they aren't allowed to touch the motor anyways). Simultaneously Jaguar Switzerland points out that the first and second service were missed by a few months each, and therefore they are not responsible for a non-serviceable part of the car that suffered a random failure that probably went unnoticed for a long time.

Btw I have another question:
According to the service history, the car had a pre-delivery service on 8th of May 2019. The registration was completed on 21st of May 2019. The warranty however started on 29th of March 2019. How come the warranty started ticking down two months before the car was delivered to the customer? The previous owner timed his service intervals around May (I guess when he took delivery of the car), but according to Jaguar the services should have been done in March of 2021 & 2023, not May of 2021 & 2023. Any idea what is going on there?

 

IIRC they do check the oil in both drive units at the two year service, and I'd assume they do the same at the more expensive four year one. The warranty should start from the date of first registration, certainly that was the case for my 2020 I Pace. No idea why Jaguar seem to have the warranty date out of step, seems a bit odd to me.

 

Ah okay - the garage told me that they don't touch the motor during a service, but perhaps the oil change is not considered "touching the motor".

With respect to the registration date, the first service was done two months late, the second service was on time. I'll attach the service history

 

Their initial quote is so ridiculously high that you can't negotiate from that point, just walk away.

The actual value of the motor is likely closer to $2,000 - I cover component values in my job.

I think what you need to do is try and get a third party to fix it for you and put a new motor or replacement in. No idea who and might be hard to find but someone can probably do it.

Can anyone comment on whether it can be fitted with a completely different motor? (might cause software issues?)

 

Their initial quote is so ridiculously high that you can't negotiate from that point, just walk away.

The actual value of the motor is likely closer to $2,000 - I cover component values in my job.

I think what you need to do is try and get a third party to fix it for you and put a new motor or replacement in. No idea who and might be hard to find but someone can probably do it.

Can anyone comment on whether it can be fitted with a completely different motor? (might cause software issues?)

I agree, and can confirm that the replacement drive unit will need to be coded to the car and that I think the only software tool that can do this is the Jaguar one. There may be some way to get this done, though, as drive units are readily available. This one's £500 but needs a new shaft seal: JAGUAR I PACE FRONT MOTOR DRIVE UNIT J9D3-75762-AM T4K18909 2018-2021 | eBay

 

Would you mind telling us what town in Switzerland you are in/near. Might help to consider repair options in neighbouring countries as well - places within a few hours drive.

 

I'm near Zurich. I found a spare parts shop that has a "dead" I-Pace (from May 2019) with a front motor of unknown condition which I could buy for around 5500 USD (just the motor, not the whole car). The Jaguar dealership said they would actually install it my car (instead of a brand-new unit), but of course the labor cost remains at 4000 USD. This would bring the repair cost down to a fraction under 10'000 USD, which is still a lot to me to be honest. Plus nobody will guarantee that the repair with the used motor (110'000 km) will actually do the job.

 

Why you keep quoting the prices in USD instead of CHF?

 

CHF seems quite obscure internationally

 

The whole point of EVs is that heavy duty industrial motors such as in tunnel shafts and other ventilation systems run for years without failure. Maybe the previous owner drove the car over enthusiastically, but that should not lead to failure. It might be worth writing to a motoring magazine to see if others have such issues and it is a design flaw?

 

You quoted 5500 USD for a secondhand motor whereas someone was selling similar in UK for £550.
(Unless I misread something) it sounds like you should take a holiday in the UK and get the car sorted here for 5k all in including hotels and Pizza.

Gaz

 

How do I get the car to the UK though and at what cost?

 

Based on what I have seen of other main dealers diagnosis of problems with EVs and the far from helpful approach I would definitely want to get the opinion of an independent specialist. It could just be that their diagnosis of what the problem is is wrong anyway.
ps international lot on here understand (wie viel douzig?) swiss francs
used to live in Thalwil so not far from you; very nice place.

 

Is the vibration so bad you couldn't drive it the 500 miles odd? Or even buy your own car transporter truck, and sell it later.
The Ukraine guys in the next topic might have some ideas??

 

You could also look if there's a place in the Netherlands. It's after Norway the country with the highest EV adoption in Europe and there's bound to be workshops that could help you out. Everybody speaks English.

 

James from Cleevely used to work for JLR. I'd contact Cleevely Mobile first and see if they have seen the issue before and whether a jaguar main dealer can be trusted to diagnose it properly. Getting the jag dealer to drop the motor and then send that to cleevely to repair might be another option. I'd wonder whether the vibration is something else entirely and that has to be ruled out.

Or a touring holiday in another car with the jag motor in the boot to Cheltenham and back....

You definitely need to find someone else to look at it and make sure it's definitely the motor and not something else.

I have no idea what consumer laws are like in Switzerland but the supplying dealer should really be the one getting some heat for selling a car without a full warranty if they were a full Jaguar franchise. If the car was also advertised with warranty and it's not actually the case due to late services again you might have power to go after the supplying dealer for the cost of repair. If the car was as described Jaguar would be picking up the bill.

 

Seems that the consensus is mostly to go for the repair, albeit not through the official dealership?

The suspicion of the front motor being bad actually came from the garage where I had the tires re-balanced and the steering geometry checked (just a random workshop, not associated with Jaguar). Their chief mechanic took the car out for a test drive after they had checked the tires and the steering, and he suspected the motor being the culprit of the elevated noise levels and the vibrations.

Only afterwards did I go to the closest Jaguar dealership, where they suspected a tire being out of balance, then a bad wheel bearing (which they replaced but it didn't do anything) and finally after a thorough check according to them the only thing that was left was the motor. The mechanic I talked to said it could be something simple like a bearing inside the motor housing being a bit iffy, but he is not allowed to go service that. I also contacted another (non-Jaguar) garage but was told that they don't look at EVs at all and that I would need to go to an authorized dealership.

With regards to driving the car: At the Jaguar dealership I was told that yes I can still drive the car but no it probably won't last much longer without any repairs.

I already posted this question a bit further up, but maybe it got lost:

Does anyone understand the two month gap between the warranty start date and the registration date? As you can see, the previous owner had the car serviced (more or less) around May - which I guess to him made sense because he got the car in May - but according to Jaguar the warranty actually started in March and the car should have been serviced around March, not May.

 

There are HEVRA garages in Europe, but the website seems to be broken. https://www.fixev.org/

Regarding the warranty date mismatch, it’s likely to have been a pre-registered car offered at a large discount - I have the same issue with my Smart #1, which has a warranty start date of November 2023, when it was registered by the dealer, even though I show as the first owner on the V5, and bought it in February this year. It was sold for £9,000 less than the list price - that’s a fair trade for losing 3 months of warranty cover! Of course, the Arnold Clark app reminds me when the service is due, so I’m unlikely to miss them, so the warranty should be in tact.

 

I offer nothing but a brutal situation report. With a little bit of sympathy at the end ...

BEVs are great when they don't go wrong and brutally expensive when they do. I get a lot of back-chat from people trying to assert this is no different to ICE ownership. I disagree.

I strongly recommend to never own a BEV without a warranty unless you can afford to scrap it and it owes you nothing already.

You have examined the situation in regards missed services. In the UK we have a motor ombudsman who has set precedent that if a missed service would NOT have picked up some later fault, nor related to it, then it is irrelevant and the vehicle manufacture needs to honour the warranty. That is the basic principle here.

However, in your case, it has moved on from that and it is about 'good will'. Jaguar are declining 'good will' because of late services. Their choice to do so, nothing that can be argued logically from there.

I always recommend early services for warranty purposes. It usually makes no difference at all to overall cost because if you do an annual service then your last service is at the end of the warranty.

e.g. 3 years warranty, 1st service in the last week of 1st year, 2nd last two weeks of 2nd yr, 3rd last month of 3rd year. = 3 services.

Or, 1st service after 9 months, 2nd after 18 months, 3rd after 24 months = 3 services.

This is particularly (more) true for leasing cars, because you might feel like taking the risk to not service the car at all after the 2nd year (your choice) but that's not an option if you are leasing.

Meanwhile, find yourself someone who will replace the drive unit. There will be someone. Don't abandon all hope. People have done more difficult jobs than that on BEVs before now.

I hope it is a brutal experience that concludes with satisfaction for you, rather than more brutality. Good luck.

 

One further observation, you say bought 'recently'. Your country may (should?) have laws about merchantable quality and if you can later prove that the fault was latent at time of purchase (you might well be able to) then you would have a claim to recover your costs.

So, keep those costs reasonable (sounds like you have to) and keep the old unit untouched for now. Don't butcher it, and tell the repairer not to either, keep it sealed and complete.

Write to the vendor once the car is repaired, ask for your money back on that, or explain to them that you have the old unit to inspect to see if the cause was likely present when the vehicle sold.

They can then agree, agree in part, or refuse and you might then look for a professional engineer to inspect the part.

Reason to do it that way is that you can't fairly ask the vendor to refund the engineer's inspection cost to prove something the dealer might have already agreed on, but you can if they had previously refused to assist with the repair cost after the event.

Just a thought for you if money is an issue and you want to look at suing a case.

 

Anyone in this situation is not going to be happy obviously.

No the motors shouldn't fail at that mileage. No Jag customer service is not great.

On the other side you didn't buy car from them new ands it's out of warranty so as with most manufacturers good will gesture very unlikely.

I like the Ipace good looking cars at auction I have seen low mile HSE 21 / 22 plate for circa £20k plus fees.

Reliability and Jag customer service puts me off. In your circumstances I would have sourced a drive unit from a write off and had an independent EV shop swap it out . Repairs bill would be a fraction of that quoted by Jaguar

On a side how are the motors / drive train not covered as with 8 years battery warranty. They are on Tesla and other than large drive units on early model S NEVER fail even with hundreds of K miles...

 

The main issue is repairability! Things brake and always will, but there should be a degree of fixability to it! I mean I doubt your motor is truly dead, but because it is a HV EV part it is like boogie Man and everyone is afraid to touch it! Have you tried to change the Motor oil?

 

Also extended warranty a must really.

I got three years three months aftermarket warranty when I bought model S. It wasn't that expensive offering some extra protection.

 

I sort of agree . But the warranty I got was buttons really for three years when bought with car.

It covers some of the major issues that can come up if not covering cost entirely so just adds a bit of extra protection for not much outlay. I know from the Tesla forums they do pay out a decent wedge on things like the cabin heater which can fail. I had two new headlights done by Tesla within the dealer warranty - around £1000.

In any event the main issue here is the drivetrain is not covered under the 8 year battery warranty. As it is Tesla for example.

That said the drive units on EV are very reliable so you have to be unlucky.

Going back to the original poster it's unrealistic to expect good will from manufacturers on a car you have not had from new outside warranty.

You would struggle to find any manufacturer these days that would do this....

It's just not a realistic expectation.

 

Back to the issue - I might be thinking of a totally different car, but wasn't there something about a drive-shaft coming out of the transmission bit - could it be that rather than the motor itself ? Please don't shout if I'm completely way off the car involved here !!