Jaguar Land Rover will produce new U.S.-specific models with Stellantis partly to get on the “right side” of the tariff barrier and reduce its dollar exposure, the company’s chief financial officer said. JLR and Stellantis announced in May that they would collaborate on new vehicles for JLR under the Defender brand focusing on the U.S. market. Richard Molyneux, JLR’s CFO, confirmed on the company’s earnings call Aug. 13 that it would include production in the U.S. at Stellantis facilities, once a memorandum of understanding between the two companies is formalized at the end of this year. The models would be developed with help from Stellantis, rather than JLR shifting production of its stronger-selling models to Stellantis facilities in the country. “At our scale, it doesn’t make sense for us to localize production of existing vehicles into North America,” Molyneux said. “We sell circa 30,000 Defenders in the U.S. each year. We can never localize efficiently at 30,000 units, or even at 50,000 units.” #JaguarLandRover# #JLR# #Stellantis# #JLRStellantis# #automotive# #autoindustry#