Digital Tech in the Range Rover Velar

Gerry McGovern, Land Rover design director and chief creative officer, with the Range Rover Velar, the company’s new midsize SUV.

The cluster and other digital tech on the interior of the Velar were developed by Visteon along with Jaguar Land Rover.

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The Range Rover Velar—which is not only the latest in the brand’s lineup, but which, as a midsize SUV, slots between the Evoque and Sport—is based on the Jaguar Land Rover Lightweight Aluminum Architecture and has a design that’s predicated on what they’re calling “reductionism,” which presumably means the elimination of anything that is superfluous.

One thing that is certainly essential to any new vehicle is the deployment of advanced technology, whether it takes the form of the exceedingly slim LED headlights outside or the Land Rover Touch Pro Duo infotainment system on the inside.

Some of the inside tech for the Velar is provided by Visteon Automotive Systems (visteon.com). For example, there is a 12.3-inch fully reconfigurable HD “virtual” cluster with retina-class resolution that serves as the primary driver interface and which can be configured in a variety of ways to meet the driver’s requirements.

According to Sachin Lawande, Visteon president and CEO, “The Velar is the first vehicle to feature Visteon’s latest-generation, fully reconfigurable instrument cluster technology, which incorporates significantly enhanced software capabilities and processing power.”

The cluster is powered by advanced multicore platform technology designed for superior multimedia and graphics performance. The HMI was developed in collaboration with Jaguar Land Rover. It is based on the Rightware (rightware.com) Kanzi UI development toolchain which facilitates development of custom shaders for unique Velar graphic effects in support of a wide range of brand themes, navigation and off-road features, as well as album art.

In the back seat there are dual 8-inch displays that utilize vertically aligned (VA) liquid crystal technology, achieving contrast levels in excess of 2000:1. There are also full 24-bit color rendering and high luminance. The screens, which operate independently, offer a 16:9 widescreen format and they incorporate HDMI and HD link connections that support most smartphones, tablets and other portable devices.