Brexit-Backer Ratcliffe to Build Ineos’s Electric 4x4 in Austria

Siddharth Philip, Bloomberg News

A Grenadier 4x4 automobile, manufactured by Ineos Group Holdings Plc, during a media event to unveil the first hydrogen-fueled double-decker bus in London, U.K., on Monday, Oct. 18, 2021. Ineos Group plans to invest more than EU2 billion ($2.3 billion) into electrolysis projects to make zero carbon, green hydrogen across Europe over the next 10 years. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Ineos Automotive Ltd., owned by chemicals tycoon and Brexit-backing billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, said it would build its electric 4x4 at a factory in Graz, Austria.

The yet-unnamed model will be developed with Magna International Inc., with production beginning in 2026, Ineos said in a statement Monday. The new vehicle will be smaller than the Grenadier, Ineos’s first model that is currently made at a plant in France.

Ratcliffe’s Ineos Group began making the Grenadier — an homage to Jaguar Land Rover’s original rugged Defender — after failing in a bid to bring back the original model when JLR decided to end production in 2016. Ineos considered building the Grenadier in Wales, but in the end it took over Mercedes-Benz AG’s plant in Moselle, near the French-German border.

The Grenadier is powered by gasoline and diesel engines made by BMW AG and is named after a pub in London where Ratcliffe said the idea for his own Defender-replacement was hashed out.

Separately, Ratcliffe is bidding to buy Manchester United FC.

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