Ask the car's navigation system for the nearest Starbucks. Instead of giving you the address, it projects a translucent green line on your windshield, tracing a route on the road and guiding you off I-405 to a coffee shop near Portland State.
In Jaguar Land Rover's new lab in Portland's Pearl District, three-dozen researchers are imagining the ride of the future. In a converted warehouse, they're testing concepts that could make driving safer -- or at least more entertaining.
Technology and autos have had an uneasy relationship for a long time. Carmakers have generally been slow to adopt innovations from the much-faster tech industry, resulting in features that are clunky or quickly obsolete.
Worse, the advent of smartphones has turned mobile tech into a hazard, distracting drivers who seem unable to resist the pings calling them to respond to a constant stream of texts and emails and social media.
It may not have to be that way. Nearly every automaker now has a research lab like Jaguar Land Rover's, studying better ways to integrate technology and driving.
And every big tech company, from Apple to Google to Intel, has its own automotive initiative. They're all working to improve mobile technology for drivers and -- in time -- shift the responsibility for driving to the computers altogether.
Matt Jones, a veteran Jaguar Land Rover engineer from England, said his facility is working to understand drivers as well as technology. It's expanding rapidly in Portland, hiring 50 more engineers and adding a startup incubator to help uncover new concepts.
"We don't make people dangerous," Jones said. "We allow them to do what they want in the car, safely."
Jaguar Land Rover's Portland site is its only product development site outside the United Kingdom, Jones said, "and we're the only one in the world with pinball machines."
The pinball machines are for the software engineers, not the drivers. It's an amenity (Jaguar Land Rover, or JLR, also has colorful, open workspaces and, perhaps unusually for an automaker, bike parking) to help attract Portland's in-demand technologists.
Nestle into a car seat inside the lab and choose a car -- coupes, high-end off-roaders, sedans -- and take off down the Pacific Coast Highway or through Yosemite.
A giant, wraparound screen creates the illusion that you're actually driving, so JLR's engineers can study which technologies make drivers better and which become a distraction. As you drive, researchers might toss in a potential distraction -- a beach ball, perhaps, or a bear -- and measure how well you respond.
One concept captures images of road signs on camera. If a semi drives between you and the sign, the car projects an image of the sign on the windshield - right where it would be if the truck wasn't in the way.
Going for a spin in Portland Jaguar Land Rover's driving simulator Richard Rowe, software manager in Jaguar Land Rover's Portland research lab, goes for a spin the company's theater-sized driving simulator.
Most automakers have their tech outposts in Silicon Valley. JLR came to Portland in large part because of ongoing work with Intel, which has been investing for years in automotive technologies -- one of the chipmaker's many efforts to diversify beyond the stagnant PC market.
Three years ago, Intel established a $100 million investment fund to pursue automotive technologies. It has its own research efforts around the world, from Hillsboro to Germany, seeking new ways to apply Intel's computing power.
Working with Ford, Intel developed cameras that look inside a vehicle. Facial recognition technology might identify a driver, or sound an alert if the cameras catch a driver's attention wandering away from the road.
"These technologies and capabilities will enter the vehicle somewhat incrementally," said Elliot Garbus, an Intel vice president in Arizona who runs the chipmaker's automotive group. And as those new concepts arrive, Garbus said drivers sometimes react in unexpected ways.
For example, some new vehicles already come with "adaptive cruise control," which monitors other cars on the freeway -- automatically slowing down to match the pace of surrounding traffic. Garbus said drivers new to the technology aren't sure how to react.
"There is a moment of anxiety: Should I hit the brake or should I let the technology do what it's supposed to?" he said. "They described it as a white-knuckle moment for them. It's just panic."
One solution, Garbus said, it to ensure drivers understand what a car is doing and why with clear, simple displays. Another is to give cars the ability to learn how drivers react -- some might slow earlier than others, for example -- and teach the car to react in the same, familiar way.
Tech companies and the auto industry have been slow to make such driver-friendly adaptations, according to Garbus. Part of the problem is that the auto industry's design cycle runs three to five years, making it difficult to bake in cutting-edge mobile technologies that are obsolete within months.
Automakers are also reluctant to cede their brand power to Apple or Google, Garbus said. They want to retain some technological distinctiveness.
"It's a battle of the ecosystems," Garbus said.
Drivers, meanwhile, are frustrated by existing automotive technologies, said Mark Boyadjis, a senior automotive analyst for the research firm IHS. There's too much variation in how they work, too many proprietary designs that confuse people.
"Everyone knows how to press an accelerator. It's the same in every car. But navigation, (wireless) Bluetooth, they're not created equal," Boyadjis said. "There's some that are wildly worse."
Automakers now recognize that installing substandard technology will undermine a company's brand and customer loyalty, and they're getting smarter about understanding how to work with the tech industry.
Luxury brands including Jaguar Land Rover will be among the first to take advantage of the new paradigm, Boyadjis said, because they have a customer base that can afford the latest and greatest amenities. But until recently, he said, JLR's technology was "among the worst to use in the market."
Boyadjis said the new Portland lab reflects the influence of Tata Motors, an Indian company that bought JLR from Ford in 2008. He said Tata infused the company with cash and a sense of urgency around new technologies.
JLR's ongoing Portland expansion underscores just how seriously the automaker takes driving technologies.
"Companies don't make major investments like JLR has made," Boyadjis said, "unless the market is going that direction."
©2015 The Oregonian (Portland, Ore.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
