Jaguar Land Rover Opens New Facility For Testing Advanced Electrified And Connected Vehicles

Most of us are well-versed with cars that are equipped with connected car technology. For those that are not in the know, connected car tech allows users to pair their smartphones with their cars (mostly via an app), whilst also monitoring their vehicle’s location amongst other useful features remotely. At the same time, electrification of vehicles is one of the other predominant strategies that automakers are focusing on.

Jaguar Land Rover has now become part of this club by opening a brand-new facility. This facility, which goes by the name Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC), is a laboratory that’s situated at Gaydon in the United Kingdom. The lab will be at the forefront of designing and testing advanced electrified and connected vehicles from Jaguar Land Rover. According to the group, the facility will be working on electrical and radio interference for their upcoming next-generation vehicles.

However, for the time-being, this is a bespoke testing program by the Jaguar Land Rover group. One of the leading examples of this comes in the form of the new Range Rover Sport which was launched in May this year. It features the latest in the field of connected car technology, which will eventually be seen in future models from the JLR group. Among the chief concerns for the marque when it comes to its new project, has to do with electromagnetic interference.

This is why Jaguar Land Rover set-up the Electromagnetic Compatibility lab. One of the main tasks of the EMC facility is to test a bunch of electrical equipment and systems that go into electrified and connected vehicles, and figure out how well each of them perform in their respective electromagnetic environment. In essence, EMC will work by limiting the unintentional generation, propagation and reception of electromagnetic energy in order to mitigate or reduce the overall risk of electromagnetic interference between the various components of these vehicles.

Jaguar Land Rover’s new facility in the UK will conduct its EMC tests with the help of two specially-developed anechoic chambers. One chamber will be utilized to run tests on various vehicular components and features such as batteries or electric motors. Bluetooth, GPS, WiFi, 4G, 5G, adaptive cruise control, wireless charging and blind spot monitoring. The other chamber will be home to what the brand’s engineers are calling an “electrically quiet rolling road. This particular facility will allow the engineers to test a vehicle at a predetermined speed whilst also monitoring the various parts and components of it on multiple performance matrices.

Commenting about the project at the time was Peter Phillips, Senior Manager, Electromagnetics and Compliance at Jaguar Land Rover. Phillips stated that, “The importance of testing our vehicles for electromagnetic compatibility cannot be underestimated. Opening this new testing facility is an important step forward for the business and it will play a crucial role in helping us deliver quality, legal, and customer satisfaction.”

As the automotive world moves fast into securing its future by researching, designing and implementing multiple ideas and technologies, the rate at which progress will be made is only set to rise. The key areas where one may keep an eye out in the near future includes more and more efficient electric powertrains, a plethora of advanced digital & cloud-based services for vehicles, increasingly reliable and advanced autonomous technologies, and rapid inclusion of up-to-date software updates via OTA method in cars of the future. JLR’s new facility will also keep its eye on other crucial factors behind these vehicles such as quality, legal, and customer satisfaction. All of this will eventually come to a head as part of JLR’s ‘Reimagine strategy’.