The automotive rumourmill went into overdrive earlier today because of this set of spy photos sent out by one of the European spy photography agencies we subscribe to. The focus was the blue E badge on the rear. We've seen Jaguars with S and R badges, but never an E badge.
Everyone assumed E meant some kind of electric or hybrid powertrain. But we think in this situation, Occam's Razor applies - this is most likely the 163 PS 2.0 diesel eco-focused E-Performance variant that is rated to output just 99 g/km of CO2, a company car driver's dream in the UK then?
Car companies have taken to producing special eco-focused variants of their cars. Often, these cars take an existing variant and tip the balance between efficiency and performance more towards the former. Engines get further reduced in size, final drives are tweaked to keep the revs extra low at the expense of acceleration, extra aerodynamics measures are applied, etc.
But having good emissions isn't enough, you need to brand it. BMW has EfficientDynamics, Volkswagen has BlueMotion, Mercedes-Benz has BlueTEC, and Audi recently introduced their ultra badge.
Jaguar's E-Performance badge is something similiar. While the new Ingenium 2.0 diesel in the XE normally puts out 180 PS and 430 Nm, the E-Performance version does 163 PS and 380 Nm. But this along with other measures help drop the regular 2.0 diesel manual's 109 g/km CO2 output to the 99 g/km we mentioned.
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