There are plenty of driving assistants for safe driving on asphalt and there are more and more people every now and then. In the field, however, drivers usually have to rely on themselves – with the notable exceptions of the “off-road cruise control” type on some Toyota models or the steep hill assistant, apart from off-road driving modes.
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As part of an event called Software Day 2021, the Stellantis Group has revealed several ideas that it wants to offer to jeeps with an Internet connection in the future. So far, these are concepts, but they could emerge in future generations of Jeep vehicles.
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Let’s start with off-road navigation. This is an extension of the classic navigation system, which would offer maps of more than 6,000 off-road routes, so that drivers do not have to rely on mobile phones or paper maps.
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This is associated with a function called Group Ride, ie in Czech “group ride”. This would allow the connected cars – in other words, equally equipped with brand new jeeps – to see each other on the route. Such a thing would have the great advantage that the rest of the group would see where the one who had been lost or whose car had broken down was. Stellantis also mentions the possibility of communication with this function, even without mobile signal coverage.
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This is how the Jeep imagines that the owners of the new wranglers would be seeing each other, taking an off-road route together.
Photo: Stellantis
The other two things are already offered by some other carmakers. Upgrading on-board software is the norm and a large augmented reality head-up display is getting on the road as well.
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However, the one in jeeps could be supplemented, for example, by a side tilt indicator, which can still be seen in the instrument panel or in the central display in the Wrangler and Gladiator models, for example. And for electrified versions, it could also display the battery charge status so that the data is visible from the outside.
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The group introduced the concepts of these systems as part of its strategy of monetizing cars connected to the global network, so that these services would probably be subject to some periodic fee after a period prepaid in the price of the car.
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