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Jaguar Land Rover CEO Thierry Bollore is leaving the automaker just two years after he took on the role.
Bollore, 59, will step down effective Dec. 31, JLR parent Tata Motors said on Wednesday, citing personal reasons for his departure.
Adrian Mardell, currently JLR’s head of finance, will take over as interim CEO. Mardell has worked for the automaker for 32 years and is currently a member of its executive board.
Bollore’s exit comes as JLR struggles to ramp up production amid industrywide supply-chain issues. The company has also been unable to make significant headway on electrification.
Semiconductor shortages have left customers for $100,000 Range Rovers waiting more than a year for their vehicles, with sales suspended for some variants. In the quarter ended September, the carmaker reported deliveries to dealerships that trailed guidance by 17 percent.
JLR has reported losses for seven consecutive quarters, according to Bloomberg data, most recently reporting a loss before tax of £173 million ($206 million) in the three months ended September.
The company said Nov. 9 that it forecasts an improvement in production and sales volumes in the six months to March 2023, and said free cash flow may approach break-even for the full financial year.
Bollore has been revamping JLR’s business model in an electric-focused strategy called “Reimagine” with a plan to make all Jaguar cars fully electric by 2025 and offer battery variants of its Land Rover vehicles.
The carmaker has not given much further detail on its plans, such as where it will build electric models or where it will source batteries from.
In May, Bloomberg News reported that JLR was in talks with Northvolt and SVolt Energy Technology about supplying batteries for a range of EVs it may produce in Slovakia.
JLR hired Bollore as CEO in 2020 to return Britain’s biggest automaker to profit after it took a big hit from the COVID-19 pandemic. Almost a year earlier, Bollore had been ousted as Renault CEO amid the fallout from the Carlos Ghosn scandal.
JLR said earlier this month that it expects positive profit margins and cashflow in the second half of 2023. The division’s performance is key to India’s Tata Motors as it contributes nearly 60 percent to the group’s revenue from operations.
Reuters and Bloomberg contributed to this report