Every driver knows major metro areas are peppered with potholes. The severity can range from the merely cringe-inducing to the decidedly dangerous, and in attempting to fix them, municipalities face a perpetual game of Whack-a-Mole.
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And now Jaguar Land Rover is testing a system to combat potholes on three fronts.
The 'Pothole Alert' technology will use a sophisticated camera to read road surfaces, identify problem patches, and alert drivers. But that's only one facet of the system, which will also utilize MagneRide active damping—the same trick tech which makes thoroughbreds like Ferrari's 488 GTB so good—to prepare the suspension to absorb a shock if it's unavoidable.
Perhaps the most interested element of the experiment, however, is the possibility of reporting the camera's data to the cloud, which would allow not only other—potentially autonomous—vehicles to benefit from warnings, but give local governments a detailed breakdown of where the worst hazards lie.
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There's no estimate of when we could see Pothole Alert or the company's arguably cooler Transparent Pillar Technology, on production vehicles, though the system is slated for installation on a Range Rover Evoque soon.
For now, continue to keep your eyes peeled.
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