Jaguar Land Rover will let you control your smart home from your infotainment screen

published 9 January 2018

Jaguar Land Rover has announced Qualcomm and Gentex are working in its cars which mean all future cars should be able to control your smart home from the infotainment system.

That should mean when you’re out and about in the car you’ll be able to adjust systems like heating and lighting at home. Imagine getting the house warm ready for your return or remembering to turn on a light for security after you’ve left for a long journey. You could even get the oven preheated ready for a quick dinner, if you have the right smart home gadgets.

The latest Jaguar I-PACE, the company’s first all electric vehicle, will come packing this new technology. The inclusion of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820Am chipset will mean superfast processing for things like over-the-air downloads, ultra-quick connectivity and of course next-level in-car entertainment.

The Gentex addition will allow the Jaguar I-PACE and other cars from JLR to control the smart home gadgets. This is thanks to the HomeLink Connect app which will make the connection between smart home and car as seamless and easy to use as possible.

Gentex is also the company responsible for showing off a rear-view mirror with a built in LCD which displays the feed from the camera in the rear of the car. This is being shown off at CES 2018.

Other companies announced as working in Jaguar Land Rover cars include MyCroft AI with an artificially intelligent assistant, CloudCar to understand natural language commands, LISNR to connect things like apps, users and keys without pairing thanks to sound wave authentication, and Panasonic for the intuitive user interface found in the Range Rover Velar and Range Rover Sport.

All this is part of Jaguar Land Rover’s vision for the future of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAV) which will reach a whole new level when 5G rolls out in the near future.

Luke is a former freelance writer for T3 with over two decades of experience covering tech, science and health. Among many others Luke wrote about health tech, software and apps, VPNs, TV, audio, smart home, antivirus, broadband, smartphones, cars and plenty more. In his free time, Luke used to climb mountains, swim outside and contort his body into silly positions while breathing as calmly as possible.