It’s all starting to make sense now, why British luxury carmaker, Jaguar, would dive head-first into the all-electric Formula E racing series.

This week, the company unveiled the Jaguar I-Pace Concept at the Los Angeles Auto Show - its first ever electric vehicle, only in this case, it’s a performance SUV with styling derived from its C-X75 hybrid-electric supercar concept, which we saw at Paris in 2010.

Jaguar Land Rover already has some experience in electrification, gained from its 2012 XJ_e plug-in hybrid prototypes to the 2015 Evoque_e project, which has seen its engineers amass a wealth of knowledge into lithium-ion cell design, electric motor design and state-of-the-art battery and thermal management systems.

The Jaguar I-Pace is a zero-emission, battery electric vehicle that will go on sale early 2018, with a range likely to exceed the concept’s current 500km claim.

Richard Agnew, Global PR Director at Jaguar told CarAdvice, “that the basic battery technology – pouch cells, the amount of cells, and the battery management system are shared (in terms of the basic chemistry and the way we manage the batteries) between Formula E and I-Pace.