Jaguar Land Rover has announced plans to double the size of its advanced research team by investing in a multi-million-pound R&D centre, which will be based at the University of Warwick.

The National Automotive Innovation Campus (NAIC) is part of a £100 million development that will allow 1000 academics, researchers, technologists and engineers to work on future JLR projects. The building will feature engineering workshops and advanced powertrain facilities to develop the latest in design and rapid prototyping technologies.

Jaguar Land Rover is the lead partner in the project investing £50m, along with Tata Motors European Technical Centre (TMETC), WMG (Warwick Manufacturing Group) and the UK Government’s Higher Education Funding Council England (HEFCE).

Construction of the NAIC is scheduled to begin in September 2014 and it’s hoped that the facility will be ready for use in 2016. JLR already enjoys a close relationship with the University of Warwick, with some 200 researchers and engineers currently based at its campus, collaborating with university experts on a number of projects.

JLR hopes to double the size of its advanced research team to 500 people by 2016 and it’s expected that the majority of the new staff will be based at Warwick.

Antony Harper, Jaguar Land Rover’s Head of Research, said: ‘These collaborative research programmes will harness the best of UK engineering innovation, and with the extra capability the NAIC gives us, you can expect the number and range of new, fresh innovative ideas that we patent, and then take to production in the future, will increase significantly.’