Stanton left JLR for EV start-up
NEWS
14 AUGUST 2019 AUTOCAR.CO.UK 15
M
ark Stanton was one
of the big beasts in the
British car industry.
He built his career at
Ford and Jaguar Land Rover,
becoming JLR’s director of
vehicle engineering and then
head of its Special Vehicle
Operations division.
But he has joined the exodus
of s e n i o r a u to m o ti ve t a l e nt to
China, where he is now chief
technical officer for bold EV
start-up Human Horizons.
The firm revealed its first car,
the HiPhi 1, last week. A six-seat
coupé-ish SUV with high levels
of autonomy, it’s due on sale
in China by 2021. But why did
Stanton, 59, leave JLR’s high-
performance arm to gamble on
a Chinese start-up?
“SVO was meant to be the
pinnacle and to begin with it felt
that way,” he said. “I don’t want
to speak ill of JLR because I still
have a passion for them and the
product, but the frustrations
grew and grew. It should have
been a great swansong but it
didn’t turn out that way...
“I could have gone on
another three or four years
and retired, but I didn’t want
to do that. I wanted to change
direction and do something
different.”
Moving to China has been
financially rewarding, but
Stanton said he had offers
from several manufacturers,
two of which would have kept
him in the UK. But he said: “I
didn’t want to go and work for
another big OEM. I didn’t want
that management style and
that baggage. I was looking for
more freedom.”
After meeting with Human
Horizon co-founders Kevin
Chen and Ding Lei, both of
whom have worked with
western brands in China,
Stanton decided it was a match.
He relocated to Shanghai
last year and now leads a team
of 400 engineers. “We could
never have moved so quickly in
any traditional OEM,” he said.
Stanton said his contacts
in the automotive supply
b a s e h ave b e e n u s efu l , w i th
many components for the
HiPhi 1 sourced from top-tier
European firms. Those
include Michelin low-rolling-
resistance tyres, which,
Stanton said, “aren’t widely
available in China.”
Stanton had another reason
to sw i tc h to a n E V- o n l y fi r m :
“I got religion, I guess.” Having
been involved with JLR’s
electrification programme,
“the environmental side has
become really important to me.
C a r s h ave b e e n a r o u n d fo r 1 1 0
years and I’ve been working
Ex-JLR star behind HiPhi 1
Challenge of new autonomy-rich EV lured top engineer to China
THE NEW ORDER: EXECS JOINING THE CHINESE REVOLUTION
Wayne Burgess: Geely
Burgess left his long-term
senior design role at
Jaguar this year to head
up Geely’s UK design
studio, working across the
Chinese maker’s brands.
David Twohig: Byton
The Irishman was a Renault
and Nissan veteran who
was engineering lead of the
acclaimed Alpine A110. He’s
now the tech chief of Chinese-
US start-up Byton.
Giles Taylor: Hongqi
After six years as design chief
at Rolls-Royce (and 13 years
designing Jaguars before
that) Brit Taylor left last year
to join Hongqi, overseeing its
global designs from Germany.
CONFIDENTIAL
SUVs MIGHT BE king in
Europe right now, but Volvo
is ready should that change,
according to UK operations
director David Baddeley:“We’re in a good place
from a product strategy
standpoint,” he said. “We’re
not trying to go into every
little segment or niche.
We’ve genuinely got a global
footprint now, something
that’s really only happened
in the last fi ve years, after 92
years of history.”
COULD BENTLEY JOIN
Audi in dissenting from
the VW Group ranks and
investing in hydrogen fuel
c e l l s? “ We w ou ld n’t r u le t h at
out,” said Bentley’s sales
boss Chris Craft. “There’s no
question battery technology
needs to move on further.
We’ve got to deliver range
as well as performance. In
the next few years, that will
mo v e on but w e w i l l a l s o
consider other drivetrains.”
PETER BEDROSIAN,
Nissan Europe’s product
planning chief, believes it’s
government legislation,
not technology, that’s
slowing the advancement
of autonomous vehicles.
“It’s not the know-how
holding us back,” he said.
“A lot of policy needs to
change before we introduce
level three autonomy and
above. It requires a big
change in legislation and
infrastructure because it
profoundly changes cars.”DACIA SALES GREW by
10% last year, bucking the
broader market trend. But
Europe boss Jean-Christophe
Kugler said there’s even
more room for growth and
the only limiting factor is
production capacity. There
are still no plans for an
extended line-up or for any
new models before 2021.