Luxury Electrified | 2020 Jaguar I-PACE Review & Drive

This 2020 Jaguar I-PACE is an effort in the all-electric market. It is a luxury vehicle with a premium interior, great driving dynamics, and it's got style to boot. We're going to take a look at all the features on the outside, check everything out on the inside, and go for a test drive. Let's get started. Thank you everyone so much for tuning in for this Jaguar I-PACE review. So there are three trims, the S, SE, and HSE, and we have this top HSE with several features, most of the options, and we're going to go through all of that on the outside here before we hop inside. So starting out right up front, one thing that we get is the signature LED lights. It's kind of like these J hooks down here, which is pretty cool. It's really nice lighting, and I like the design. It looks great at night as well. These are full LED headlights to top it off. Then in addition to that, we've got LED fog lights, real slim down below, and it's kind of a unique front end. It's very aerodynamic front end. You've got this pretty cool Jaguar emblem in the front, and that can even be illuminated as an option. We don't have that though, but it's kind of a split grille design, and you can see the little vent right there. That is actually a functional vent, helps with aerodynamics, and up on the hood, this is a functional vent too. So it's different than what an internal combustion engine is. The air comes in there, and it swoops out through the hood and up over the top. It's a very efficient aerodynamic design. You can see that we have the LED turn signals that takes up those J hooks right there, so that looks really nice as well. At night, these headlights don't do quite as well as I was expecting. They still do a good job, and this car looks fantastic at night. It just really stands out, especially with this paint. The overall design of this Jaguar is very sleek. As you can see, no matter which way you look at this thing, and this is the Casium Blue, which is an optional color. It's a really vibrant color. It looks great on this Jaguar, especially with some of the black trim pieces as well, and these extra large wheels. Speaking of the wheels, you can see just how much of the wheel well is being filled out, and there are some really massive wheel wells and kind of arches over those wheels. Typically, you'll get 20-inch wheels, but we've got these optional 22-inch wheels. You've got that Jaguar emblem on there, really unique, kind of got the two-tone look to it as well. Pirelli tires on here. You've got the black trim piece at the bottom, and one unique thing is that the car actually looks like it sits really low. It's kind of got a big lower body portion. The battery is actually below the vehicle. Now, these mirrors get these LED turn signals. They're heated. They power fold as well. We've got blind spot indicators. They're both automatic dimming and both reverse tilting as well, so that's really nice. That's always welcome. See those door handles are sticking out right now? That's because the vehicle is unlocked. When it's locked, those door handles actually tuck inside the body to help with aerodynamics. The dimensions of the I-PACE are 184 inches long, whereas a Model X is 198 inches long, so this is significantly smaller. It's a pretty nimble, small vehicle. We have the adaptive suspension and air suspension as well, which I'll talk about in the driving dynamics, and the battery is within the floor between the axles. That really helps lower the center of gravity. You'll see that it has a radical sweeping cab forward profile. It's a unique design, but it's really sleek. It's got massive rear haunches, kind of a striking and aggressive design at the same time, and as we come to the back, you can really see how big those haunches are. This back end is really sleek. We kind of have these crushed, slim, sleek LED tail lights. Those also look nice at night, really stand out. It's just a premium-looking vehicle, no matter how you look at it. It's got the huge Jaguar emblem on the back, and those are not actual real vents on the back of the vehicle. It just kind of looks like it, but it's got a little EV badge on the side there. Let's go ahead and hop inside. Now, cargo space for the I-PACE is still a big part of why people are going to get this shape and size of vehicle. We get the gestured tailgate, which is nice. Well, there we go. You can do that on either side of the vehicle for the hands-free access. It is fairly quick going up, and behind this area right here, we get about 25 cubic feet. It does suffer some with its cubic feet because of the sloping exterior style of the vehicle, but that's really not too bad, and there's a 12-volt power outlet and a couple hooks back here, not to mention a little bit of storage under the floor. The back seats are 60-40 split, and when you fold those down, you'll get about 51 cubic feet, which is much more impressive, and you can take out this cargo cover. My only legitimate complaint about this cargo area is that you have to go to the back seats in order to fold down the seats, so there's no power option or a lever on our particular model in order to fold these down, which is something I really expected. But otherwise, when you have everything folded down, it does give you a fair amount of space, and I was even able to put my stroller back here with some groceries with no problem. But wait, that's not it. There's actually a frunk or a trunk in the front of the car because we don't have an internal combustion engine, so it is pretty small, but this is a good place to store your home charging thing or any other kind of items, and you even get a little cargo net right there as well. Now, our Jaguar key fob is really nice. It's really substantial. The buttons feel good. You can open up your front trunk and your rear trunk, of course, and you've got Jaguar written on the back. It's just a nice key fob overall. Now, there's remote start available on the Jaguar app where you can control the climate on the inside as well. These door handles are really unique, so it's unlocked right now because these door handles are out. Push the button. They will go in. The mirror will fold, but at night, when you unlock the vehicle, door handles will pop out, of course. The mirror is going to project Jaguar down on the ground, which is pretty neat, and the door handle is even illuminated. So getting into the Jaguar is pretty cool. There's actually a function to where when you turn the vehicle off, so when you get in or get out, the vehicle will actually lower with its air suspension called access height. And for some of you, that might make it more difficult to get in because the vehicle's lower, but it's kind of cool that it can do that. You don't have to have it on. Now, these seats are really quite impressive. We have the light oyster color, which is a nice color, but I do have one complaint that I'll tell you in a second. We have the Windsor leather sport seats on this HSE that include 18-way heated and cooled with four-way lumbar support. You've got bolster adjustment, thigh extension as well, so you can really get comfortable in here. They also have three position memory settings, and at five foot nine with the seat mostly pretty low, I still have pretty good space, especially because of this panoramic fixed glass. So taller people, six foot and up, should be able to fit in here okay. It does get a little bit crowded by your knees, especially with this center console. But overall, I would say these seats are very comfortable. I have had no complaints whatsoever with the seats. The adjustments are great. At this price point, I was maybe expecting a massaging function, but really, I mean, they're still pretty darn nice. The steering wheel is heated and leather wrapped, and it's a very nice soft leather. I was also expecting a power adjustment and maybe an easy entrance exit with the steering wheel, but we don't get that because it's manual adjustment, but it does have really good motion. The rest of the interior is definitely modern looking with some practicality built in, and that doesn't always go together. There are nice materials around, a floating center console, and it's just a comfortable, nice place to be. Now, let me give you a quick run through of this interior. This is nice and soft. This is nice and soft. This armrest is nice and soft. Even down here is softer as well. You've got a really nice grab handle there, metal door handle, and three position memory settings on the door, and all one-touch windows. My bottle does fit down there like that, and there's a little bit of storage off to the side. Right over here, you've got your parking brake, and you can open up your front and rear cargo area and adjust the interior lighting. Now, take a look at the steering wheel. You'll see that there's not anything illuminated here because the buttons are actually illuminated, but it's a really nice soft leather wrapped steering wheel with some good grips right here. Push button start, still foot on the brake, and you go. Now, your buttons light up on your steering wheel. Definitely nice that it is heated. Even the stocks do have some nice material on them, and on this right stock, we get rain-sensing windshield wipers. Now, one thing that we don't have is a head-up display in our trim, but you can get a head-up display as optional equipment. This information display is pretty cool, so it's a little bit confusing to get it to work the first time if you're not used to it because you have to use a button on the steering wheel that you also use for the stereo. So, of course, I have two different setups. I have a gauge in the middle, and then the economy on the right. You can scroll through all this stuff on the left here, as you can see, and you can even change the setup. So, you can change what's on the left side, the right side, and, whoops, went a little too far, and then you can even make it whether it's one gauge or two gauges, the full map, or all media on there. It just depends how you want to do it. So, that is pretty cool. So, let's go ahead and change this up, and you can have it like that or have everything laid out in front of you. As we go over to the middle, one thing that I like, I kind of have a love-hate relationship with it, is this Touch Pro Duo. So, this is the top portion, which is 10 inches. I'll show you the bottom in a second. It's pretty cool because it looks cool, and there's a ton of information that you can see on here. So, you can kind of check up on your EV status. There's several different settings that you can change on here. It's kind of nice how you can change the theme of the screen as well, but going through and changing things, it's kind of laggy, as you can see right there. There are, like I said, several different things you can customize. You've got all these shortcuts down on the bottom. There's just no actual physical buttons here, but at least you get this volume knob over here, parking sonar, the 360 camera, and then even a parking assist button or the park pack that we have for parallel and perpendicular parking. Now, one thing about this is that the stereo system is really nice in here. It's the Meridian Audio. We have the optional 825-watt 15-speaker system, which is pretty sweet. Let's go ahead and check out this camera. So, I'm going to actually put it in gear. There's a few different things you can see. You can see this backup camera right there. You've got the 360 option over there. Even when you're in drive, you can see different views. So, go ahead and look kind of 360 top down. You can decide which camera you want to look at, which is pretty neat. Different views right there. So, that is pretty cool. It's a useful camera. I just wish you could have it so it would automatically pop up at certain situations. Now, just below that, we got the five-inch screen right here, which is mostly a little bit of audio control, some climate controls, and even have an air ionizing system in here. So, you've got the top-notch climate controls. You've got these dials here, so you can change the temperature on here. You can push it and turn on your heated seats. So, that is pretty cool as well. We've got our shifter right here. As you can see, you've got all your gears. It takes a little bit of getting used to right there. It's in a good spot if you're going to have a push-button shifter. And then, the other side, we've got our drive modes up on the top, traction control. And then, right here, because I just got into the vehicle, it's on the low setting right there. So, that is how you raise and lower the suspension. And then, this is part of the floating center console. So, you have this open space right there, which works great for a phone or a wallet. And there's a USB charging port on that side and the other side, which is convenient. And then, even underneath of there, you have another section of space. It's a nice little handy storage slot right here. I've been putting keys and stuff in there. And then, I definitely am not a fan of these bottle holders. So, the right side is wider. And my bottle that's not that big is a pain in the butt to get in and out because it's just grippy rubber. And I can only imagine that that's going to wear out really fast. And same thing on this smaller one here. I even had a takeout drink in the larger one that was hard to get in and out. And a nice soft center folding armrest. It does not slide forward, but you've got a couple USB ports, 12-volt power outlet, SIM card. And this bin is actually quite large. And check that out. You can even move the cup holders and it just shows you just how massive this bin is. And then, up above, there's an automatic dimming mirror and we have garage controls. There's no mirror camera like there was on that Land Rover though. Still get a sunglass holder, which is good to see. And then, up above, we've got this fixed panoramic roof. So, that is pretty neat. It's tinted. It goes way back and that's all it is. It doesn't open up or anything, but it's still pretty cool. And then, at night, we have ambient lighting. We have kind of a sea green lighting in here in the front and the back seats. It looks really nice. You can get optional multiple color ambient lighting, but we don't have that. Now, a couple of things I've got to complain about is the visibility. So, out the front's not bad. Out the side's not bad. But once you look back there, that is pretty bad. You can't see very well at all out of here. That's just one thing about the design. Another thing I don't like is I love the look of this white interior or this oyster interior, but you can see from people's jeans, and this only has about 4,000 something miles on it, it's already starting to get some discoloration, especially on that seam over there and even in the back seats. And it's just, that is definitely disappointing. Also, on the door from people's feet, I've tried to wipe that off and it's not really coming off. I think that that and the seat are mostly stained. It's possible you could condition them to fix that, but that's a bummer. Now, in the back seat of the I-PACE, this isn't that bad of a place to be. You've got to remember that this is 184 inches long, so it's not quite as long as some other vehicles, like I mentioned, the Model X. I still have decent space behind myself at five foot nine. There's a mat pocket in each pocket. The one little complaint is that I feel like my knees are a little bit high and it'd be nice to have a little bit more space. If I had to scoot the seat back much further, it probably wouldn't be that comfortable. Everything else back here is nice though. The material on the doors are nice and soft, just like they are up front. You've got a speaker right here, which is pretty cool. You've got a soft fold down armrest with a couple small drink holders and a little storage bin in here. In front of us, we have heated seat buttons for the outboard seats. No ventilated seats back here though. You've got two USB ports and a 12 volt power outlet. And there are no vents in that center console, but there are actually vents on the side pillars, the B pillars here, which do a pretty good job. Now, since we don't have a gas engine, we have all electric power. And if you're not familiar with how that setup goes, it's a little bit different. We have an electric motor in the front and an electric motor in the back. They're both mounted to the axles. And then in the middle, at the bottom of the floor of the vehicle, you've got the 90 kilowatt hour battery. That battery is heated and cooled automatically. You don't have to worry about that. And the fact that we have those mounted low, the battery in the middle, it really helps with driving dynamics because you can have the weight at the bottom and a good distribution between the front and the back instead of a heavy engine in the front. And since we have a motor, both front and back axle that gives us all wheel drive and power output is really good with this electric vehicle. You get 394 horsepower and 512 pound feet of torque. And the thing about electric is the torque comes out instantly. So as soon as you touch the gas, boom, you go. And we'll go for a test drive in just a second. Zero to 60 time is actually even 4.5 seconds, which is pretty respectable. And the efficiency is measured a little bit differently because it's electric, but there's an MPGE, mile per gallon equivalent, that you can get. I'll put those numbers here on the bottom of the screen. And the range for the Jaguar I-PACE is about 234 miles. But for 2020, there are some software updates available to bump that up to 250 miles of range. And if you're a little leery about the battery and the longevity of that, it's got an eight year, a hundred thousand mile warranty on that battery. Now, some of you might have questions about charging. I know I'm not familiar with this very much. I've only had like one plug in hybrid vehicle the whole time I've been doing these reviews, but this actually comes with a regular three prong outlet. You've got this little charging meter right here. So you plug this into your house or plug this into your garage, wherever it is. You can just pop this open and then it just plugs in just like that. And there's a little light that will light up to let you know that you're successful. Now, if you do it with that on a regular basis, just forget about it. The charge is so slow with that from 120 volt outlet that it's just almost not worth it unless your cars are going to be sitting for a long time. I had maybe like 60, 50 miles or something left of range, plugged it in. And it told me I had like 30 something or 40 something hours left to charge. That is crazy. Now you can get a faster 240 volt charge at home. And I would highly recommend that because you can plug it in and charge in about 13 hours, which is much more respectable like charging overnight. And then you can go to a 50 kilowatt charger and charge up to 80% in about an hour and a half or something like that. And then there's even faster chargers to get up to like 60 miles within about 15 minutes. But the real challenge for me and the biggest headache was having to really go to a charging station in order to drive as much as I drive. Now, obviously most of you are probably going to have that charging station at home where you can do it in about 13 hours. And that is probably the way to go. Enough of the complaining about charging. Let's go ahead and go for a test drive and see just what this electric power is like. All right, everyone, let's get going on the test drive here. So right off the bat, one thing I want to say is if you own an I-PACE and you're not aware of this, there's a couple different settings you can have for your regenerative brakes. You can control that in your center display. You can have it on high or low. When it's on high, you pretty much have to keep your foot on the accelerator at all times in order to keep moving. And you let off that accelerator, it is heavy braking. Then you can have it on low and it's more like normal. And then on the main screen, you can decide whether or not you have a creep. I think it's on here. I can't remember on here, on there. But I changed it to where you have the creep like a gas car. When you let off the brake, the car is going to just kind of gradually creep forward. You can turn that off to where it doesn't move at all. So that's up to you. But my first impression of this I-PACE is that it feels very substantial. It's just, it feels like it's planted on the ground. Obviously, we have all-wheel drive. You've got a very low center of gravity with this body. And the weight distribution is fantastic because of the way the battery is positioned at the bottom of the floor and between the axles. And acceleration is very brisk. We'll get on it a little bit later. I'll talk about how quick it is, how the steering feels, put it in dynamic mode, and what it's been like to drive this over the past week. Now, when I let off the gas on the low regenerative braking setting, it's going to automatically charge the battery a little bit. But when you get on the brakes, you're going to use more regenerative braking to help charge the battery a little bit. Now, the steering feel, at least in normal mode, it feels good. It's a responsive vehicle, that's for sure. The throttle, you have to get on it just a little bit in order to get it moving. But once you do, it just, it goes. I mean, there is just no delay. And there's no delay because you don't have, there's no turbo. It's not gas. It's not like a regular transmission. You just go. It is instant. Now, this road has some, a little bit of bumps, a little bit of unevenness, and this car feels very smooth. It just kind of floats over so many of the imperfections. However, this has the large 22 inch wheels, and there's some bumps where you hit it and it's just a crash. It's just boom. It's just, so the 22 inch wheels look fantastic on here. They fill out those massive wheel wells really well. But if you really love your ride comfort, I would definitely not go for those. Now let's go ahead and get on it in normal mode. It is so quick. That was up to over 60 in no time. And it is just instant. It'll throw you back in your seat. You can definitely have some party tricks with this, with that 4.5, zero to 60 and the instant torque. Throw some of your friends in here. The one thing I got to say about the brakes though, is that they are very weird. They're kind of touchy. So it's just almost nothing. And then all of a sudden you get a lot of brakes. So the first little bit of the pedal, there's just not much going on. At least in the low regenerative braking setting. And then otherwise it's just, it's a little bit difficult to modulate. Not my favorite. I'm going to put it in dynamic mode for some fun sportiness and pedal down. So quick. It's kind of got a ghostly little noise to it as well. It sounds pretty sweet. So this has the air suspension. It can move up and down. It has adaptive active dampers as well. And the steering even gets a little bit stiffer. This just feels great. You can really move this car. And it's not necessarily designed for that or not necessarily, you know, marketed as that. But it is fast. It's fun to drive. It's still efficient. Even if you get on it quite a bit, you're not going to use a ton of the electric power, but you definitely want to watch it. It shows you in the middle right there at all times. And you can kind of watch your instantaneous economy of how many kilowatt hours you use per hundred miles. So that can kind of help gauge you and you can kind of mirror that as if it's like MPGs. Going around here. Feels good. Feels very planted. Such a low center of gravity. Obviously we don't have RPMs visible or anything like that, but you can tell, geez, that noise is kind of freaky, isn't it? It's really, really fun though. Really cool. Now I'm gonna turn the cruise on and I've got the, we've got the adaptive cruise control, stop and go, and the lane steering assist. It is active too. So it keeps you in your lane very well. This is a really responsive system. And on the interstate, it definitely, if you trust these systems or you use these, you can use it and stop and go traffic. I haven't, but just on the interstate behind people, going around people, it's been very responsive and I've enjoyed it. And it can even adapt to the speed limit for you. You have speed sign recognition that shows up in there. Now the road that I like to get on with noise, this car picks up some road noise. There is definitely some road noise that comes in, but it's not a lot. At low speeds, this car even canceled out some sounds and you don't have the gas noise. So when you have a pretty smooth road, it is just whisper quiet in here. When you get up to high speeds, you still don't even really get hardly any wind noise. It's such an aerodynamic vehicle. So that makes a big difference. You've got laminated glass up front as well. So this car is very serene and quiet in most cases. Some of the other drive modes, like I've driven in eco a little bit and it definitely dulls your throttle somewhat, but it helps you kind of learn how to be more efficient with your energy usage here. It gives you a gauge, a couple of gauges down there. You can look on your screen over here and it tells you how well you've been breaking, how well you've been accelerating and all that to help you just drive more efficiently. If you want to save some, some miles, but really with driving this car every day, it's, it's not a large exterior footprint. So it's pretty easy to maneuver, get around to park this. It's very sleek looking. You'll definitely get some looks in this car. Now I'm going to put it in dynamic mode again. And from a stop, Oh, it just goes. Oh, this car just moves. And this is not even as fast as some other vehicles. It just, it feels so quick because of that instant torque. As far as living with the car on the interior, I've enjoyed the interior for the most part. I'm not necessarily a big fan of everything and how this screen is laid out right there with the touch pro duo. Um, I prefer a little bit more of real touch buttons and stuff, but that's just the way luxury is. This is very practical down here. It's nice storage here, storage down below the ambient lighting at night is good. So I definitely enjoy that. All the touch points are comfortable. It's just a, it's really comfortable, easy to live with. Maybe not quite as many features as I was expecting. Um, you can get a head up display, but we don't have it. You got to pay extra for it in that Land Rover. I was recently in, we had the camera on this rear view mirror. We don't have that. Um, so a couple of things, the stereo sounds fantastic in here though. I've got the car back in dynamic mode. And with this all wheel drive, this car grips, there's no loss of traction whatsoever. You've got big tires and this car just moves. I've said that enough, but with luxury that's expected to have some power and that's what you get in here. This Jaguar is very impressive. It's a very impressive driver. Now let's go ahead and wrap things up and talk about some more. So to wrap things up on this 2020 Jaguar I-Pace, make sure that you have a faster charger at home. So you would have to pay extra to get that other charger or make sure you have a good subscription or a conveniently located charging station close to you. Cause that was my biggest complaint with this vehicle and it's not this vehicle's fault. I wish that you could get a level two charger included with the car instead of just the standard home plug. But once you do have some power and some, some miles in this thing, it's fun to drive. It's a premium experience on the inside. I just wish it was maybe a little bit bigger for this price or a little bit cheaper. I think it's a steep price, but overall I think many of you will be happy with this Jaguar for an electric vehicle. Thank you so much for tuning in. Be sure to subscribe for more weekly videos like this. Check out my night review going through all the details of the exterior and interior lights. Check out some of these other videos and have a great rest of your day.