Your Future Car Will Be An AI Assistant So You Can Focus On Driving

Jaguar and Land Rover never want you to pick up your phone or adjust your seat or mess with the climate controls. Your car will handle it for you and all you have to do is drive.

JLR is calling it the "Smart Assistant" and it's like Google Now, the Android app that offers up predictive, contextual information based on your daily routines, but centered on driving.

The system starts when you're walking up to the car. It recognizes the phone in your pocket, and before you open the door, the mirrors, seat, and steering wheel are pre-adjusted for you. The interior temperature is set automatically and if you're partial to a morning massage, it has the air bladders going as soon as you sit down. And it's not just for the driver. JLR says that the system will detect passenger's phones and set their own climate controls, seat settings, and entertainment options based on previous preferences.


But the real focus of the system isn't about just comfort and convenience, it's about tapping into your behaviors to deliver the information you need when you need it.

The "Smart Assistant" uses a combination of your previous routines, your phone's calendar and contacts, and some on-board AI to tailor the system to your schedule.

Kid has soccer practice? The system sees it on your calendar and tells you when to leave, but also ties into your notes to remind you to bring her gear. Call the wife at a specific time every day? It learns that and offers to place the call. Running late to a meeting? The system will email or text the crew to let them know.


If you take the same route to work every day at a specific time, it has that destination dialed in to the nav before you leave, and if you take a different route than what's dictated by the system, it defers to that rather than what it thinks is right. If you've got a meeting across town later in the day, it will even calculate how much fuel is necessary to make the trek and let you know if you need to fill up before leaving.

But the most impressive bit is the system's ability to rework how it drives. After it has a baseline on your throttle, braking, and following distances, when the adaptive cruise control is on, it will mimic your own driving behaviors – good or bad.


And like devices from both Google and Apple, if you rent a Jag or LR, or purchase a new one, all those predictive settings migrate over, which is another way to keep you in the JLR family.

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