Carmaker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has announced it will cut 4,000 jobs over the next two years. Most of the layoffs are planned at the company's head office, which is located in the UK. This is happening for many reasons, including the recent devastating cyberattack and US tariffs, but the most important factor has been increased competition from China.
JLR expects most employees to resign voluntarily, but is prepared to terminate contracts unilaterally if necessary.
The company currently employs 43 thousand people worldwide. It hopes to save £1.7 billion through the redundancies.
“The automotive industry faces very significant challenges in the face of technological change, intense competition and ongoing geopolitical uncertainty,” JLR chief executive PB Balaji said in a statement.
According to BBC correspondent Theo Leggett, sales of Jaguar Land Rover in major markets have continued to fall recently. The company also continues to suffer from the effects of a cyber attack that shut down production for five weeks last year.
According to experts, then a total of 5 thousand enterprises were affected; the production cycle could not be fully restored until January 2026. Researchers said the cyberattack caused JLR 1.9 billion pounds (about $2.53 billion) in damages.
In the financial year ending March 2026, the company's overall sales fell 20% to £22.9 billion (compared with £29 billion in each of the previous two financial years).
As our correspondent notes, until recently, Western automakers viewed China as a land of opportunity: there was a rapidly growing middle class that was willing to buy foreign cars, including such expensive ones as JLR's flagship products, the Jaguar and Land Rover.
At that time, JLR, along with other European companies (such as BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz), were actively selling their products in China while competition in the European market was very high.
But now the situation is different. Over the past 10 years, Chinese manufacturers have rapidly ramped up their own production with the support of their government, which has set out to make the country a leader in the electric car industry.
This has led to very intense competition, in which Chinese companies have been able to significantly raise technological standards and speed up development.
Combined with a general slowdown in the Chinese economy and declining sales, this has made the Chinese market significantly more challenging for European manufacturers.
JLR sold 146,000 vehicles in China in 2017, a record number. In the last financial year, this figure was only 52.4 thousand. The company's revenues in the region fell sharply.
It is not only the British auto giant that is experiencing such problems. The German concern Volkswagen recently announced that it would cut 100,000 jobs by the end of the decade - and falling revenues in China were also a key factor.
China's automakers have also created new problems for their European competitors. Facing fierce competition at home, leading Chinese firms such as BYD and Chery have begun successful expansion abroad.
They are rapidly gaining greater market share in the UK and Europe. For example, in the first half of 2026, the Jaecoo 7 SUV produced by Chery became the third best-selling car in the UK.
This car has received the nickname “Land Rover with Temu” - both because its outline resembles JLR products, and because it costs much less, as if it were being sold on the popular Chinese Internet platform Temu.
However, competition from China is far from the only problem for the British automaker, as well as for the European automotive industry as a whole.
Experts say that JLR was quite late (compared to its competitors) in its program to convert its products to electric motors.
Back in 2018, the concern launched production of its first all-electric SUV, the Jaguar I-PACE. However, since then, production of other electric car models has not begun - and only last week JLR announced the launch of an electric Range Rover.
In addition, JLR is also experiencing problems in its other most important market - the United States. From March 2024 to March 2025, the company sold more than 120 thousand cars there. But the following year that figure dropped to less than 100,000.
This is partly due to the consequences of a cyber attack that disrupted production chains. But sales and profits were also hit by the Donald Trump administration's import tariffs—and the resulting turmoil.
