What's the news?
There's a big connected drive technologies shebang going on at the moment, with testing taking place all over Europe, and Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is part of the plan. Key to autonomous vehicles' long-term success is their ability to 'talk' to one another and the road infrastructure (known as vehicle-to-vehicle, or V2V, and vehicle-to-everything, or V2X, comms). Such interconnectedness could give rise to some interesting tech and JLR's latest announcement is automatic overtaking.
JLR is working with former overlord Ford and current owner Tata Motors' European Technical Centre to work on V2V and V2X, with 100 research vehicles collating data on how this might work. The idea is to make the driving experience smarter, cleaner and safer for all in years to come and the auto-overtaking trick would be part of Advanced Highway Assist, JLR's motorway-driving tech. We've already got radar cruise control, blind-spot warning and lane-keeping assist, so it's simply a case of refining those systems and adding in some indicator signalling work to make a JLR vehicle autonomously overtake a slower-moving machine on a dual carriageway or motorway.
JLR also announced the same sort of technologies that Ford is working on, which are Electronic Emergency Brake Light Assist and Green Light Optimal Speed Advisory; you can read about both of those here.
Anything else?
Tony Harper, head of research at JLR, said of the wider V2V/V2X project with Ford and Tata: "We know that there's a huge potential for these technologies in future vehicles around the world. Until now we have focused on communication between Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles, but this collaborative approach is a major stepping stone towards all connected and autonomous vehicles co-operating with each other in the future. Our aim is to give drivers exactly the right information at the right time and collaborations with other manufacturers are essential to help us deliver this commitment to our customers."