2012 Land Rover Lr4 Hse Sport Utility 4-door 5.0l on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Jaguar Land Rover building new R&D center for hybrids, EVs, autonomous cars

The success of Jaguar Land Rover in recent years has largely been down to a resurgent product lineup, but a recent move into the research and development will see the British-based, Indian-owned brands take the fight to its German rivals more aggressively than ever before.
JLR is investing 50 million pounds ($80,345,000, as of this writing) in a joint R&D center in central England. The move will more than triple its staff dedicated to research, from 150 to 500, with Wolfgang Epple, JLR's Director of Research and Technology telling Automotive News Europe, "In order to play among the big animals in automotive and to be anchored in the mind of customers you have to have offered something unique, to be first in market. We want to be one of the key premier automotive manufacturers."
Jaguar Land Rover's 50-million-pound contribution represents more than half of the 94-million-pound tab, on the so-called National Automotive Innovation Campus. Based at Warwick University, Tata's European Technical Center, Warwick Manufacturing Group and the Higher Education Funding Council, an agency of the British government, are all chipping in for the facility.

Jaguar Land Rover offers (some) detail about new Ingenium engine

Jaguar Land Rover officially announced its Ingenium family of engines with the unveiling of the 2.0-liter version in the Jaguar XE concept at the 2014 Geneva Motor Show, but it kept details very thin at the time. All we knew was that the new turbocharged mills could be configured to use gasoline or diesel, and be positioned longitudinally or transversely. Months later, JLR is finally letting some more info slip about its new baby, but there are still some big questions to be answered.
For the Ingenium project, Jaguar Land Rover gave its engineers a clean sheet of paper and told them not to worry about using any previous parts or machinery. In the end, the designers came up with a family of turbocharged, aluminum-block engines based around modular, 500cc cylinders to allow it to grow or shrink as the market demanded. The layout was also made adaptable enough to incorporate hybrid drivetrains, if needed. "Being configurable and flexible are the two key strands of Ingenium's DNA because we have future-proofed our new engines from the outset," said said Ron Lee, the company's director of Powertrain Engineering.
To maximize efficiency, Jaguar promises that all versions of the Ingenium engines come with computer-controlled, variable oil pumps and water pumps to use only as much energy as needed. They also get direct injection, roller bearings for the cams and stop/start. The diesel version alone has 17 percent less internal friction than the mill it replaces, the company claims. JLR is also promising class-leading figures for Ingenium's torque and horsepower too, but it's not giving away those specs just yet.

Pivi Pro Jaguar Land Rover Infotainment Review | A massive improvement

Infotainment systems in Jaguar Land Rover products have irked us for a long while. They’re generally a good step — or several — behind other luxury automakers' infotainment systems in terms of features and looks. But the big problem has always been their functionality. Even right out of the gate, they exhibited an undue amount of lag and general bugginess. Pivi Pro is supposed to change all of that. ItÂ’s JLRÂ’s completely new-from-the-ground-up infotainment system that is quickly spreading across the companyÂ’s range of products. It features a new screen size and layout. Plus, the software itÂ’s running is vastly different from what we saw previously. Our Byron Hurd got a first taste of it with a number of JLR products in a short period of time and found it to be a big improvement. Now, weÂ’ve had a new Land Rover Discovery in the garage for a longer period to fully suss out the system. Will it hold up? Watch the video above for a quick tour, and keep reading for some more detailed thoughts. Before diving in too deep, you should know off the top that Pivi Pro is a massive improvement over JLR infotainment systems of old. There are still some issues, but the new systemÂ’s performance is exponentially better than what itÂ’s replacing. This is partly thanks to it now running off its own backup battery. This allows the whole system to load immediately upon startup, ensuring that you arenÂ’t sitting and waiting for items to populate after you press the start button.  The new 11.4-inch screen this software plays on is splendid to both look at and touch. ItÂ’s a super-high-resolution panel, and it takes to our inputs quickly and without protest. The new UI layout makes things easier and prettier, too. All of your important items are tucked into a panel on the left, making them super easy to find and select. Plus, a sticky “home” button means you can always find your way out of menus when youÂ’re done diving around. We dig the three-panel home screen and its minimalist style, but for those who might favor maximum functionality over a pretty home screen, you can replace this with rows of app icons. For those wanting to use their phones, there is indeed an in-car WiFi data plan available to buy. Plus, JLR newly allows you to connect two devices via Bluetooth instead of just one. Both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are nicely integrated with this new system.