► Jaguar Land Rover expands self-driving tech centres
► Working with Nvidia
► Will power next generation of luxury cars
The future of cars will be defined by four things; connectivity, autonomous tech, sharing and electric power – and JLR has announced new plans to double down on the second. In addition to its growing range of electric cars, the Jaguar Land Rover group has announced three new tech hubs in Europe, all dedicated to developing the company’s self-driving technology. The move is expected to create 100 new engineering jobs worldwide.
‘We are harnessing talent in autonomous technologies around the world to develop new autonomous technologies for our future products, which will deliver a truly modern luxury experience for our clients,’ said Thomas Müller, product engineering director at Jaguar Land Rover.
‘Software is essential for us to deliver a fully connected experience for our clients and creating global engineering hubs will enable seamless hybrid working across several locations and ensure we harness the best talent for our business.’
Where are they?
The new hubs will land in Munich, Bologna and Madrid and join an existing network of hubs in everywhere from the States to China, India and Manchester. Add that up and there are over 1100 engineers already working on JLR’s autonomous technology.
This level of investment makes business sense; alongside electric power, autonomous technology is going to be increasingly important for consumers, and therefore an important way to differentiate from the competition. The news comes just days after Nissan revealed its own UK-based autonomous trial in Woolwich.
What are they?
Designed to power the self-driving tech in the next wave of JLR’s luxury cars, the hubs are a tech collaboration of sorts; they also mark the progression of the brand’s collaboration with Nvidia. Like other brands including Volvo, Jaguar Land Rover is leveraging the R&D and economies of scale of the chipmaker in a bid to futureproof its autonomous offering.
You can read more about autonomous technology here