Jaguar Land Rover announces turnaround plan as sales slide

Jaguar Land Rover is reeling from a sharp decline in sales in the third quarter as the automaker faces falling demand in its key markets of China and the United Kingdom.

Global sales for the Jaguar and Land Rover brands were down 13.2 percent on the same period a year ago, coming in at 129,887 units for the quarter. To put that figure into perspective, Tesla sold almost 70,000 units in the third quarter...in the United States alone.

The poor performance has resulted in a pretax loss of $116 million for Jaguar Land Rover. The result has also had a negative impact on the share price of parent company Tata, which is down 60 percent from one year ago.

There are even rumors that Jaguar, which is already outsold by Tesla, is considering a switch to a full EV lineup.

In the more immediate future, Jaguar Land Rover is hoping to turn things around with a new plan announced Wednesday. A specific target is a reduction in costs over the next 18 months by $644 million to $5.1 billion. The automaker will also aim to improve efficiencies in areas such as purchasing and logistics and raise funds via the sale of non-core assets.

It's not all doom and gloom as the automaker has a lot going for it. It has just opened a new plant in Slovakia for production of the Land Rover Discovery and possibly the redesigned Land Rover Defender due out by 2020. And the company has just entered the electric car fray with its Jaguar I-Pace, and sales in China should see a boost not only with the introduction of the I-Pace but also the compact Jaguar E-Pace that was just launched there.

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