Bear Grylls unfolds Land Rover Discovery's seats - car and motoring news by CompleteCar.ie

TV adventurer uses Land Rover InControl Remote App while parachuting to the ground.

What's the news?

God bless Bear Grylls - here is a man (and what a man, swoon...) who will swim through a freezing lake, jump off a mountain and even eat a spider or two purely for our entertainment. God bless Land Rover too, because here is a car company that knows how to put on a show when it has some new product to demonstrate.

So, here's the low-down. The new Discovery, the first photos of which have been revealed this week, is once again a seven-seater, but this time around the middle row and the third row of folding seats can be power operated. Because they can be power operated, they can be folded or unfolded from your mobile phone using Land Rover's In Control Remote app, which connects via the internet to the car.

So, rather than just showing us how this works, Land Rover decided to get Bear to demonstrate the system - while plummeting to the ground at high speed.

Grylls jumped from an aeroplane with six members of the Royal Navy Parachute Display Team, and while he was falling from the sky at more than 200km/h, he used the In Control Remote app to alter the seats of a disguised Discovery prototype below.

The Intelligent Seat Fold technology allows the two rear rows of seats to be fully reconfigured in as little as 14 seconds via the InControl Remote app downloaded on any iOS or Android operating system.

Once they landed, Bear and the rest of the skydiving team were able to all sit into the Discovery, now with its seats raised, and drive off.

Bear Grylls said: "Land Rover is proving why the New Discovery is the ultimate family SUV. The fact that they have created this world-first Intelligent Seat Fold technology is impressive in itself and for the remote function to work while we are freefalling from a plane is pretty cool! I'm not sure many people will be using it in such a manner but the technology to operate the car remotely in this way will undoubtedly be a real winner for busy families who want to be prepared."

Alex Heslop, Land Rover's Chief Engineer for Discovery, said: "This unique feature sets the New Discovery apart from any other vehicle. The fact that owners can change the seating while doing things like queuing with their shopping is a true milestone in convenience delivered through technological innovation."

If you don't fancy plummeting from the heavens, don't worry - the app still works fine on the ground, and the seats can also be adjusted from buttons in the boot and on the C-pillar as well as from the central display on the dashboard.