By Tim Smith
Land Rover will unveil the Discovery Vision Concept (or the what-the-new Discovery-will-probably-look-like-concept, if you’re a normal person) at next weeks New York International Motor Show.
So far, the images have been limited to line drawings that remind me of that sticker job on that Lambo spotted in Londonium, or that GTR I saw somewhere, probably on Twitter. Or something.
A Lamborghini and a police-man in leather trousers.
Anyways, line descriptions aside, Land Rover have been having a bit of a boast about some new technology, that with all of the honesty of frank (whomever he, she, or it was) I believe they have every human given right to.
(Lazy Tron based joke)
The graphic above goes some way to explain the idea. Camera’s mounted on the grill can scan the area below the driver’s field of vision giving better visibility, and, as a result, allowing for better obstacle avoidance.
Now, as we all know, most Land Rovers will never be used too far from the road. The obvious everyday use of this technology is parking. Can’t see the where the white line is? You can now. And this got me thinking.
Spot the duplicate rock from the camera being mounted too high…
You see, last week I was able to drive a Honda CRV. I liked it. I mean, not liked it, but similar to most things I’ve driven from Honda it had an actually great drive-train surrounded by an okay package.
One thing I did notice, though, something that must afflict all tall passenger vehicles was a terrifying lack of visibility out the back window. You could lose a short person pushing a pushchair back there. Or someone in a wheel chair. Or a whole school of orphans.
David Icke, it was scary.
So what about using this new tech to create all round visibility? You could see through the boot, see that bollard or child and simply not do any running over. Hell, if we’re feeling a bit fruity you could even have see-through doors and floor… A job for Google glass?
Think about it, eventually windows could be a thing that old people talk about. We’d all drive around in perfectly tear dropped featureless and colourless machines. All hooked in and being fed ideas from advertisers about the outside world.
Actually, let’s not think about that for a bit. I think I may go for a walk.
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Autoeclectic 