Picture credit: Jaguar Land Rover

Manufacturer of 4x4 vehicles and luxury saloons Jaguar Land Rover has unleashed justDrive, a new infotainment and connectivity platform.

Instead of opting for one of the more renowned operating systems, Jaguar has chosen Silicon Valley-based CloudCar to base its platform on. Jaguar has optimised justDrive for CloudCar’s InControl platform, which will support Apple iOS 8 and Android mobile phones.

When asked by Connected Car Tech about the reasoning behind Jaguar’s decision, the company stated that justDrive is actually a part of InControl Apps which is already used in production vehicles.

Apple and Google similarities

InControl is similar to Apple and Google’s solution and is therefore able to additionally offer CarPlay and Android Alliance. All three systems complement each other rather than justDrive replacing the other two.

Drivers no longer need to use their smartphone to control apps on their car’s dashboard. With justDrive, Dr Wolfgang Epple, director of research and technology at Jaguar Land Rover, explained that speech recognition and the car’s touch screen can now be used.

“We are advancing our InControl system a stage further and to the forefront of the industry with the launch of justDrive,” Epple said. “This moves the driver from the task-oriented, app-specific touch-based use of individual apps, to full control of all chosen app content through plain natural speech or touch interface."

Apps including Spotify, Twitter and Yelp are already integrated and justDrive lets vehicle owners use them for navigation, media, social interaction, voice search and information services while driving.

Jaguar Land Rover will be keeping tabs on the apps it allows onto InControl

Jaguar uses its own plain speech recognition package instead of integrating a system that comes with iOS or Android. According to the firm, it removes the need to specify a navigation provider when finding directions to a geographic location.

The voice interpretation is also able to let drivers dictate and then send a tweet or SMS using similar commands to what Siri users might be used to. For example, requesting an album to play or saying, “Tell Bill I am running late” to have a message read back before it is sent.

Not one to rest on its laurels, Jaguar Land Rover coupled the justDrive launch with the announcement of its Open Software Technology Center, a newly opened, £2 million research and development facility for infotainment technologies in Portland Oregon.