Remote control Range Rover Sport also does 3-point turns
On the road to autonomous cars, Land Rover reveals a Range Rover Sport that can be controlled remotely and do automatic three-point turns.
The headline stuff for this piece of technology is that you can drive the car from outside using just a smartphone App at speeds of up to 4mph.
That means, for Land Rover, the opportunity in difficult terrain for the driver to be outside the car, where often there’s a better view of angles and obstacles. Which does make a lot of sense. Of course, just like BMW’s parking trick with the new 7 Series, you can also use the remote to get in and out of tight parking spaces.
More technology also comes with what Land Rover are calling ‘MultiPoint Turn’, and which the rest of us call a three-point turn (regardless of how many turns it actually takes), with the car’s system turning you round and pointing you in the opposite direction without you needing to do anything.
It’s all clever stuff – and no doubt coming to a Land Rover (and Jaguar) in a showroom soon – but we do wonder how really sensible a lot of this fun electronic trickery is?
What happens when the App you’re using to drive your Land Rover remotely loses its connection? Logically, the car should stop. Has anyone else’s Sky box gone mad after the smartphone App loses it connection? A Sky box fast-forwarding through a film without your input is one thing; two tons of Range Rover bearing down on you at 4mph when you’ve slipped in the mud in front of it, quite another.
And if you can’t do a three-point turn better than the system does in the video (below), you probably shouldn’t be driving. We also worry about the cost of keeping all these systems working – or updated – for second and subsequent owners.
Or are we just being Luddites?
M1TCH says
That remote control would actually be very useful for reversing a trailer, or a boat down a slipway,