Jaguar Land Rover planning to ease the pain of potholes

Jaguar Land Rover are developing new technology that will identify potholes on the road, adjust the suspension to suit and report them to the local authorities.

There can’t be a motorist in the UK who hasn’t suffered damage to some degree from potholes in our third-world roads. And in the absence of a real concerted effort from local and national governments to properly address the issue, Jaguar Land Rover are developing technology to mitigate the pothole nuisance.

JLR are running a Range Rover Evoque with technology that allows it to identify the location and severity of potholes, broken drains and manhole covers and share the information with other drivers and local authorities (presumably in the naive hope they’ll do something about it).

At the moment, the Evoque has to have gone over the damaged area to record it, but the next step is to introduce road surface sensing technology using a forward-facing camera to identify what’s coming up, and adjust the car’s suspension to mitigate the impact, and damage, from the pothole.

Mike Bell, JLR’s Global Connected Car Director, said:

Ultimately, sensing the road ahead and assessing hazards is a key building block on our journey to the autonomous car. In the future, we are looking to develop systems that could automatically guide a car around potholes without the car leaving its lane and causing a danger to other drivers. If the pothole hazard was significant enough, safety systems could slow or even stop the car to minimize the impact. This could all help make future autonomous driving a safe and enjoyable reality.

It’s early days for the project, but it could be a high-tech solution to what is really a mundane problem – a lack of funding to address our battered roads despite huge amounts paid in tax by motorists.