Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is driving the creation of a smart city ‘hub’ in Ireland to test how self-driving cars can share streets with cars, walkers and cyclists.
The British firm has partnered with technology companies such as Cisco, Seagate, Renovo, and Red Hat to develop a 8-mile private road testing facility for driverless cars called The Future Mobility Campus Ireland (FMCI) in Shannon Free Zone business park, near Limerick.
Equipped with sensors, location systems, smart junctions and connected roads, the campus will function as a testing ground for “autonomous, connected, electrified and shared technology”, utilising self-driving versions of Jaguar’s Jaguar I-Pace electric SUV. The facility will be completed in September 2021, but testing will begin in February.
JLR said the campus, which joins its existing software hub in the business park, will allow it to “harness valuable sensor data, simulate a variety of road environments and traffic scenarios and trial new technologies”.
The site also has links to a 280 mile stretch of connected highway and a managed air traffic corridor for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from Shannon airport along the Shannon Estuary.
John Cormican, General Manager for Shannon Ireland Jaguar Land Rover, said: “This partnership with FMCI provides us with a real-world facility to trial our emerging autonomous, connected, electrified and shared technology in a strategic location. Collaborating with top-tier software companies will allow us to develop our future systems more efficiently.”
The campus is the latest of several commitments to developing self-driving technology shown by JLR. In 2018, the company announced a long-term partnership with Google’s autonomous-car arm, Waymo, developing self-driving I-Paces.
In February, JLR revealed Project Vector - an entirely new, fully engineered electric car platform that’s capable of supporting a wide variety of autonomous configurations.
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The race for autonomy is
In a way it's like turkeys voting for Christmas, one we are all running around in soulless automated alliances whoes speed and behaviour is regulated, who is going to want pay more for a premium car or even who is going to want to own a car at all?
The car as we know it is in its death throws, time to buy something fun and manual before it's too late.
jameshobiecat wrote:
Even if someone does want to own a car they won't be interested in different brands, or who makes it, just as you don't care less who makes the bus or train you travel in. Manufacturers know that they are on borrowed time, probably one of the reasons they're pulling out of producing any models that don't make a lot of money for them (city cars, sports coupes...). Short-term profitability is the name of the game, they're making hay whilst the sun shines.
Of course, there'll be no need for motoring journalists either ......
Are they going to ship in a
Are they going to ship in a load of idiot, disinterested drivers, and distracted pedestrians to make it like the real world? Will they make them all live there?