LONDON — Jaguar Land Rover’s engineering boss, Nick Rogers, will leave the company at the end of the year, the automaker said.
Rogers, 53, has led JLR’s engineering and research since 2015 during a 37-year career.
“It’s been an honor to work with such an incredible team of people to engineer and launch some of the most desirable vehicles in the world,” the UK-born executive wrote on LinkedIn. “Today, after almost four decades, it’s time to hand over a stronger-than-ever technical team.”
In a statement emailed to Automotive News Europe, JLR CEO Thierry Bollore thanked Rogers.
“Over the last decades, Nick has experienced, shaped and led so much of the Land Rover — and the Jaguar Land Rover — story. We wish him every success in the future,” Bollore said.
Rogers’ successor will be announced in the coming weeks, JLR said.
Rogers is leaving to “explore opportunities outside the automotive industry,” the automaker said. No other details were given.
Rogers joined Land Rover as a technician apprentice in 1984 when the automaker was part of British Leyland. He continued to rise through the company after it was renamed Rover Group and he became chief engineer under BMW’s ownership of Land Rover. Rogers was promoted to global vehicle line director in 2007 for Land Rover.
He became Jaguar Land Rover’s head of product engineering in 2015, succeeding Wolfgang Ziebart.
Rogers led the development of the Modular Longitudinal Architecture that underpins the new Range Rover but whose wider use within the company was severely curtailed after JLR decided to cancel the ‘MLA low’ and ‘MLA mid’ programs as well as the new Jaguar XJ.
Jaguar Land Rover had intended for the MLA platform, which supports full-electric, plug-in-hybrid and internal -combustion engine drivetrains, to underpin nearly all its models by 2025, according to a presentation the company showed to investors in 2018.
