Land Rover moves away from the truck/pc towards the car

Subscribe to the channel now: http://smarturl.it/autocar The Vision Concept previews Land Rover's new extended Discovery family. Unveiled ahead of the New York motor show, the technology-packed Vision Concept will help to bring the Discovery badge to a new range of 'leisure' cars.

"Apple CEO Steve Jobs often compared the transition from desktop/laptop PCs to tablets with the transition from trucks to cars. Just as trucks waned in popularity with the urbanization of America, Jobs theorized, so, too, would desktops and laptops with the advent of the tablet."

“When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that’s what you needed on the farm,” Jobs said at our D8 conference in 2010. “But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn’t care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars. … PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of X people.”

From AllsThingsD

"By 2017, NPD figures, tablets will have captured nearly 75 percent of the combined global tablet-laptop market, spurred on by new screen sizes that are fueling consumer interest in the device."

Looks Land Rover is taking that approach also. If you're not designing for consumers and their ease-of-use use case, your product will have challenges. Even in industry, this ease-of-use can only benefit efficiency. Land Rover is recognising that most of their potential customer base is in urban areas and taking advantage of this. 

Are you focusing on the trucks or the cars?

 

As for the see-through bonnet, what a fantastic technology:

(from Land Rover Press Release) Land Rover Debuts Invisible Car Technology -Land Rover reveals Transparent Bonnet virtual imaging concept -New level of driver awareness with a 'see-through' augmented reality view of the terrain ahead, making the front of the car 'virtually' invisible from inside the cabin -Technology provides full visibility

Neal McQuaid