Your Jaguar or Land Rover will soon be able to make MONEY and pay charges

Jaguar Land Rover are testing Smart Wallet technology for their cars, allowing drivers to earn cryptocurrency and pat tolls and charges on the go.

Jaguar has a new buzz phrase – Destination Zero – which is aiming for zero accidents, zero emissions and zero congestion, with the ‘zero congestion’ bit aiming to make connectivity a key part of reducing congestion by warning drivers of accidents, hold-ups or even pothole-ridden roads.

To facilitate that, JLR are using the oldest trick in the book to entice drivers to report stuff like hold-ups, accidents and potholes with the promise of Cryptocurrency payment for information (we’re not entirely sure how much, or who will be paying you), with payments store in a ‘Smart wallet’, all done automatically.

JLR say you will then be able to use the payments accrued to automatically pay for stuff like parking, tolls and even EV charging.

JLR has partnered with the IOTA Foundation to use distributed ledger technologies to make and receive the payments, a system which apparently incurs no processing charges. Handy.

The new technology is being trialled by JLR in Ireland, with the Smart wallet system fitted to the Jaguar F-Pace and Range Rover Velar, with the aim of creating a shared economy with the car playing an integral role as a data gatherer, making traffic run more smoothly and easing congestion as a result.

Russell Vickers, a JLR Software Architect, said:

The connected car technologies we are developing will be transformative and truly turn your Jaguar or Land Rover into a third space, in addition to your home or office. In the future an autonomous car could drive itself to a charging station, recharge and pay, while its owner could choose to participate in the sharing economy – earning rewards from sharing useful data such as warning other cars of traffic jams.

There seems to be no timeframe for integrating the Smart Wallet tech in to JLR’s cars.