I is for - Interior

Interior

The interior of the I-Pace is a very nice place to be, this is one of the reasons I chose the Jag over its competitors from over the pond. The quality of the materials is excellent and it is pretty much hand-built in Austria to an exceptionally high standard. The Infotainment is a mixture of very good and mediocre. It has been implemented better than in previous Jag/Land Rovers I’ve driven but the interface is still a bit slow and laggy. Interestingly, the 2021 model year has some very minor tweaks but the Infotainment has been replaced completely. The Audio system is also excellent. I think the B&W system in my previous Jaguar XF maybe had the slight edge in dynamic range but the I-Pace is excellent. It has some ‘interesting’ niggles though. I spend most of the time listening to either Spotify via Bluetooth or Android Auto, or, Stored media files on a memory stick or hard drive. When playing from the storage device the car has a bad habit of forgetting where it was up to and reverting to track one. There is no consistency to when it does this. It can go weeks of being in deep sleep and remember where it was and then forget in the time it takes me to get out and plug the charging cable in. The same is said about boot-up times. Sometimes, for no apparent reason after a very short stop, it seems to go into full boot mode and take ages.

Tip 1: The audio playback can be enhanced by using lossless media files. The Jag doesn’t have a CD player but it can play .FLAC files. I have converted a lot of my CD collection to FLAC for listening in the car at CD quality. It makes a significant difference if you like your audio quality.

Tip 2: If you use the pre-conditioning feature, the command to start the interior heating also, weirdly, turns on the Bluetooth. So, if you’re within range, your phone may seemingly at random connect to the car. This can be interesting if you happen to be on a call at the time. The same thing happens when you unlock the car which you may only notice if you’re on the phone to a charger support line and they ask you to unlock and lock the car to re-initiate the charge. At which point they are transferred to the Bluetooth in the car and then back after a few seconds.