09 10 2015 17 INTERVIEW Mr Epple along with the German premium brands and Volvo Jaguar Land Rover JLR is one of the manufac turers that are selectively betting on new technologies to underscore their claim to premium status Advance ment through technology so to speak Does JLR have the size and the capital to win this race against power ful competitors I would put the slogan differently What we are talking about is actually advancement through innovation and it does not need to have its roots in technology in every case It is rather a question of smart ideas And they are not necessarily related to size or available capital We are a comparatively small pre mium automaker Yet we are innovative Our JustDrive appli cation is a good example of this Spending a lot of money is not the sole identifying characteristic of innovation It is rather the execution of the right idea The trick is to create a product that customer wants JLR is part of the Tata Group Do you have freedom of thought and action Our parent company allows us to act freely and accepts the fact that we are the experts in the automotive sector And that makes sense Tata is not a typical capital investor that is intent on extracting as much money as possible from the company It is rather is a well capitalized conglomerate made up of more than 100 different companies with a wide variety of special ty companies Consider Tata Consultancy Services with more than 300 000 employees who have an in depth knowledge of IT Every company contributes its own capabilities JLR is currently developing the virtual control and assis tance system Jaguar Virtual Windscreen in which the windshield is used as a display What are you pursuing with this technology The total amount of information with which drivers must contend is continually increasing This flood of data must ul timately be processed a demanding task in an automobile Especially with regard to the operating controls One thing is certain In the future we will need solutions that conform to the vehicle Mobile devices have changed a great deal But they are unsuited to the automobile since they are generally too small Using a smartphone is just a marginal way to navi gate because of its size We need larger projection surfaces It is even questionable whether a screen in the center console is sufficient From an ergonomic standpoint as well it is not neces sarily the best placement Right because you generally are looking at the road and your eyes have to make an adjustment if the display is in the center console The result is that you are often distracted for a few milliseconds So the best alternative is the windshield Or a head up display Yes but head up displays generally measure 5 to 15 cm and are thus too small for the sheer amount of information That is the rationale for the windshield as a projection surface We re still exploring how large the usable surface can be The im portant aspect We would like to use the windshield in a way that is sensitive to the context One example It makes a big difference whether you are traveling at autobahn speeds or are driving in the city In each situation the driver is given information that he needs We are currently working on a re search project with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where we delve into the question of what you can demand of a driver cognitively in certain situations without distracting him from driving Can we assume that is not the only challenge in this regard Yes as a matter of fact We want to project the information about 5 to 10 meters in front of the car but that means you need significantly greater illumination State of the art laser light sources for example are as big as two shoe boxes and you can t get them into the instrument panel We are working at full speed on the miniaturization of the systems which are expected to produce less heat as well The second challenge It is essential to take the curvature of the window into consid eration and ultimately control the light so subtly that there is always a stable sharp image on the surface despite various an gles of curvature That only works with appropriate software algorithms and sophisticated optical systems What kind of time frames are we talking about before something like this is production ready We re assuming about three to five years from now Scientific studies have shown that head up displays also can distract drivers Where do you stand on that People are very different What one person can tolerate cog nitively depends a great deal on his personality Young people today can sit down with a cup of coffee operate their smart phone and converse excitedly at the same time That s why the issue of distraction should be dealt with carefully But all this is still a subject of research One simple rule The more oppor tunities for distraction I give the driver the greater the risk In the future will the cognitive capacities of young people tend to grow due to their intensive use of tech nology I would confirm that subjectively because that is what I see in my environment But that does not mean that these people will still have these abilities when they are older One factor is cru Over the air software updates aren t production ready due to the high risks to data privacy

Hinweis: Dies ist eine maschinenlesbare No-Flash Ansicht.
Klicken Sie hier um zur Online-Version zu gelangen.