Jaguar has introduced the showroom-ready version of the electric vehicle it hopes will usher in a new, ultraluxury era for the British carmaker, leaving aside some of the provocative notes it sounded nearly two years ago when it announced its new strategy.

In contrast with the two-door concept car Jaguar debuted in pink and bright blue at Miami Art Week in 2024, the four-door Type 01 model arrived on Tuesday in silver, with an "orchid white" interior. And where the original avant-garde teaser video depicted expressionless models striding around a fuchsia landscape, the EV's first ad features a handsome driver, atmospheric smoke, cars traveling at high speeds and a color scheme heavy on red and black.

The quirky 2024 film was "a conceptual world for a conceptual car that was really just trying to herald the new design language and the new direction that Jaguar was going in," said Rawdon Glover, Jaguar's managing director. "This is a production car that's in the real world that real people want to buy, and putting it in a context that felt more grounded felt very important."

The Type 01, which is expected to start at $130,500 in the U.S., is nonetheless still a significant departure for the storied Jaguar brand.

Known for its sporty cars that to many represented a suave, English roguishness, Jaguar has been in a sales slump for the better part of the past decade. A plan to compete more directly against the likes of BMW and Mercedes-Benz with a lineup of crossover SUVs and sedans fell flat, and executives conceded the brand has failed to connect with younger drivers.

So the company plotted an ambitious pivot: It would rip up the rulebook and switch to selling fewer cars at a much higher price. At its headquarters in the West Midlands of the U.K., designers were tasked with conjuring up a sleek silhouette that engineers had to transform into a viable machine. The result was a futuristic-looking all-electric concept car dubbed Type 00 that was larger than most EVs on the road.

The Type 01 retains much of the initial attitude.

"Ask yourself the inner question: Have you ever seen a car like this before?" said Alexey Andreev, exterior design lead at Jaguar Land Rover, after the production model was uncovered at an afternoon preview event in New York. The space around him was decorated with the new car's design elements, including samples of brass-effect anodized aluminum and "the impossible panel" -- an aluminum body side shaped into five different planes.

The production car is fast, too, able to hit 60 miles an hour in just 3.1 seconds. But whether it's fast enough to outrun its controversies remains to be seen. Jaguar's teaser film and concept car were derided online, eventually catching President Trump's attention. "Who wants to buy a Jaguar after looking at that disgraceful ad?" Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2025.

Actor Florence Pugh, Jaguar's newly minted brand ambassador, schmoozed with design journalists, bloggers and online creators at a party later Tuesday to promote the Type 01. Partygoers drank champagne and snacked on miniature lobster rolls, and cheered when Jaguar played a video of the Type 01 driving through the streets of Manhattan and appearing to arrive at the venue. The guest list was crafted to represent Jaguar's attempted leap from being a favored car of older drivers to being considered by the fashionable, cosmopolitan new-money set.

The American electric-vehicle market has grown tougher in the past two years. The Biden-era $7,500 EV tax credit is gone, prices are up, and several automakers have canceled or delayed planned models. EV sales this year are down almost 50% from 2025, according to data from research firm Motor Intelligence.

Many automakers are trying to adapt with longer-range, more advanced EVs -- especially in the luxury space. Volkswagen-owned Bentley last month unveiled its first EV, touting the $230,000 car's acceleration from 0 to 60 miles an hour in 2.9 seconds.

For Jaguar, the Type 01 will be one of the longer-distance EVs on the U.S. market, capable of driving up to 400 miles on a full charge. Engineers also aimed to give car fanatics all the things they love in a gas-powered vehicle, providing a simulated engine sound and an elongated hood.

The next step in convincing skeptical buyers and analysts will be less about selling the new Jaguar as a youthful, creative company, and more about explaining the car's full driver-friendly capabilities, Glover said.

"If some people don't like the car because it polarizes, that's OK," he said. "But we've done everything we've done with a very, very singular purpose -- what we think is best for Jaguar."