The Short:
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) said on Friday that it has completed the first tests on its self-driving car on public roads. Britain’s biggest automaker is now firmly in the race against other automakers as well as tech companies to achieve fully autonomous vehicle technology as soon as possible.
The Long:
JLR will now use the data from the tests to gain deeper insights into how driverless vehicles can be modeled on human behavior on the road, specifically in terms of interacting with traffic infrastructure and other vehicles.
According to Jaguar Land Rover’s ED for Product Engineering, Nick Rogers:
“By using inputs from multiple sensors, and finding intelligent ways to process this data, we are gaining accurate technical insight to pioneer the automotive application of these technologies.”
Additional tests on its self-driving car technology will continue through next year in the city of Coventry, historically the hub of Britain’s auto industry and home of JLR’s headquarters.
The company also announced that, starting in 2020, all new Jaguar Land Rover models will have an electric drive train option.
JLR is clearly gearing up to take on the disruptive evolution that the global automotive industry is going through. On one side, tech giants and auto makers are racing against each other to develop self-driving vehicle tech; on the other, auto makers like Tesla have helped accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles.
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