cav

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is investing in a 66km ‘living laboratory’ project in the UK, in order to develop new connected and autonomous vehicle (CAVs) technologies.

This comes after the UK Government’s announced plans to invest £20m ($28.6m) in eight CAV projects.

The new CAV test corridor that runs along Coventry and Solihull will provide real-world driving situations to analyse new driving systems.

"These technologies will also help us meet the increasing customer demand for connected services whilst on the move."

The UK Connected Intelligent Transport Environment (UK-CITE) project will see an investment of £5.5m.

This three-year project will see latest roadside communications equipment being installed and testing of up to 100 connected and highly automated cars.

The fleet used in the project will also include five Jaguar Land Rover research vehicles.

The fleet of 100 cars will try out several communication technologies that enable sharing of data between cars at very high speeds, as well as between cars and roadside infrastructure such as signal lights.

Jaguar Land Rover director of research and technology Dr Wolfgang Epple said: "The connected and autonomous vehicle features we will be testing will improve road safety, enhance the driving experience, reduce the potential for traffic jams and improve traffic flow.

"These technologies will also help us meet the increasing customer demand for connected services whilst on the move."

The project will analyse four primary technologies that include dedicated short-range communications (DSRC), 4G-based long-term evolution (LTE), LTE-V (a more advanced version of LTE) and local Wi-Fi hotspots.

Image: Jaguar Land Rover is investing in the 66km ‘living laboratory’ project. Photo: courtesy of Jaguar Land Rover.