Ineos isn't a rich man's pet project – it's a proper car maker
Ineos owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe
Owned by tycoon Sir Jim Ratcliffe, Ineos Automotive now boasts a three-car line-up
There’s a mistaken sense that Ineos Automotive is a whim of Britain's second-richest man, Sir Jim Ratcliffe; a pet project to make a car that he wants – the Ineos Grenadier – because nobody else makes a car like that, rather than a serious automotive business.
“The objective is to be commercially successful as a business and that’s what the Grenadier is doing,” said Ratcliffe, when asked if such a notion bothers him.
Such perceptions have long since been dismissed as fantasy and the Ineos Automotive story has moved way beyond that. What started as a single model with a very clear purpose – a modern successor to the Land Rover Defender – has turned into a car company that has just revealed its third model line, the Fusilier, bringing in new powertrain and platform technology and an additional factory, too. It is a company that has invested heavily in R&D, facilities and people.
Ineos has done more than most start-ups simply by getting a car into production and delivered to customers. There have been plenty of wannabes with a good idea, yet Ratcliffe’s admittedly well-financed effort has still got past the biggest hurdle of all. It has been done in a clever way, keeping design in-house, sourcing key components from elsewhere, outsourcing engineering to an expert company and then buying a ready-made factory.
Perhaps most intriguing about Ineos is its emergence as a serious car company that communicates with a welcome dose of clarity and realism. There are no splinters to be found in anyone’s backside from being on the fence at Ineos. Its chief bugbear at the moment is - in the words of Ratcliffe - “idealistic” backing that the UK and Europe have given to electric cars and “forcing them at the market”.
Ratcliffe is as quotable as they come and does not fear those who might take exception to his words and dose of realism – a position you can afford when you’re chairman, CEO and founder of the holding company that Ineos Automotive sits within.
His gripe is that, rather than there being a wider goal of carbon net zero and seeing what blend of technologies emerge to work towards that, battery-electric vehicles are being forced on consumers when they are either not ready or don’t want them, for myriad reasons including charging and cost.
“You can’t force a solution that the customer rejects,” said Ratcliffe in a lively Q&A at the reveal of the Fusilier at The Grenadier pub he owns in London. (The pub was actually renamed The Fusilier for the day and is famous for being where Ratcliffe came up with the idea for the Grenadier 4x4.)
Ratcliffe is open to not only battery-electric vehicles but a world beyond them, though he says the Fusilier is a legislative necessity to be able to operate in the UK and the EU. So beyond EVs, range-extended electric cars (his personal favourite new technology), improvements to internal combustion engines, e-fuels, biofuels and hydrogen all hold appeal and should be on the table.
As a global company, Ineos has a global outlook and Ratcliffe believes that, for example, Europe stopping development of internal combustion engines will have an impact on reducing carbon emissions in places like South America where EVs are less plausible than ever-improved, lower-carbon combustion-engined cars are.
There was surprise in our audience that it took at least half an hour for a question to come up on Manchester United, Ratcliffe's recent investment that has thrusted him firmly into the wider public consciousness. That question was in the context of Toby Ecuyer, who designs anything and everything that wears an Ineos badge, having a go at redesigning the United logo, which Ecuyer quickly clarified he would not be doing lest any unwanted headlines get out.
Meanwhile, Ratcliffe couldn’t resist a dig, intended or otherwise, at the other side of Jaguar Land Rover (Land Rover, of course, took him to court over claimed copyright infringements). He believes Britain had a design icon equivalent to the Porsche 911 with the Jaguar E-Type, which could have had its design evolved over time to leave us with a “marvellous car today”. Picking a design, sticking with it and evolving it is his plan at Ineos.
Those plans are fascinating and logical, as well as well financed. Surprisingly, CEO Lynn Calder said the company breaks even and had “a couple of months last year in the black”, although that’s for day-to-day running and excludes the huge investments made in model development and the Hambach factory in France. “The return on investment won't be this year – it’s a long way away for that,” she said.
The car world is a better place with Ineos and its cars in it, and so is the automotive industry for having Sir Jim Ratcliffe as part of it.