The 2028 Jaguar Type 01 has a 7.0-inch touchscreen. Seven inches. In an era when rivals are bolting 15-inch tablets to their dashboards, Jaguar went the other way. That single detail tells you everything about what this car is trying to be and everything about how risky this relaunch really is.
The Type 01 is Jaguar’s first EV, and it arrives not as a cautious toe-dip into electrification but as a full-body plunge into design-school abstraction. The interior is minimalist to the point of provocation. A vertically oriented touchscreen handles HVAC and secondary functions, while a separate digital display faces the driver.
That’s it for screens. No sprawling glass cockpit, no ambient lighting theater. Just materials and space.
The Type 01 is a huge sedan, but Jaguar apparently decided not to fill every cubic inch with features. A central spine runs the full length of the cabin, splitting the four seats and hiding cubby storage and cupholders beneath its surface. It’s a design choice that prioritizes visual drama over practical volume.
Four seats, not five. A large glass roof floods the cabin with light, and the seats themselves wear a mix of materials that lean heavily on cloth-like textiles rather than the quilted leather you’d expect from a six-figure British luxury car. Each seatback carries an “I” emblem, which likely references the “1” in Type 01. It’s the kind of branding flourish that either reads as sophisticated or precious, depending on your tolerance.
Jaguar’s new logos appear throughout the interior, reinforcing the message that this is not your father’s XJ. Or your grandfather’s. Or anyone’s, really. The brand has torched its visual identity and rebuilt it from scratch, and the Type 01’s cabin is where that decision feels most confrontational. There are no warm wood veneers, no chrome switchgear, no nods to the marque’s decades of leather-wrapped tradition.
The question hanging over all of this is whether design-first thinking can sustain a luxury brand that needs to sell actual cars to actual people. Jaguar is positioning the Type 01 as a rolling art piece, a statement vehicle that exists to redefine perceptions. But perceptions don’t generate revenue.
Transaction prices do. And the buyers who can afford this car, likely north of $100,000, tend to have strong opinions about what luxury should feel like under their fingertips.
Competitors are not standing still. The Porsche Taycan wraps its tech in familiar sports-car ergonomics. The BMW i7 drowns passengers in screens and massaging seats. The Mercedes EQS offers a 56-inch Hyperscreen. Each of those cars gives wealthy buyers something tangible to point at and say, “That’s where my money went.”
Jaguar is betting they’ll point at negative space instead. At restraint. At a 7.0-inch screen in a world of excess.
The Type 01 won’t reach buyers until 2028, which gives Jaguar time to refine and the public time to either warm up to the concept or sharpen their skepticism. Early reactions to the brand’s controversial design teasers were brutal. The interior does little to soften those battle lines.
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