A massive yellow hangar door carries a warning: “Danger – door not for pedestrians.”
Music starts, the door lifts, and a black curtain draws back. Inside stands a vehicle no one outside Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has seen before: the Range Rover GT.
For the first time in a decade, Range Rover is adding an entirely new member to its family of sub-brands. The vehicle waiting behind the curtain represents the beginning of this new journey. Camouflage patterns still conceal much of its exterior, and strict reporting restrictions mean the external styling remains under wraps for now.
Matthew Eyes and minimalism
A small group of motoring journalists has been invited to JLR’s Electric Propulsion Manufacturing Centre in Wolverhampton for a “surprise” reveal. In the heart of the factory, the surprise is real.
I climb into the car and begin exploring a minimalist interior, clearly inspired by art deco architecture. As I begin making notes, I am joined in the car by Matthew Eyes, programme chief for the future Electrified Modular Architecture (EMA) at Range Rover. He is eager to explain the thinking behind the interior design.
“When people first get into a new vehicle, particularly one with a lot of technology, there’s often a temptation to show everything immediately,” he tells me. “We deliberately didn’t want to do that. Our objective was to create an environment that feels calm from the very first moment you open the door.
“The dashboard isn’t designed around displays. The displays are designed around the dashboard.”
Two black-panel displays face the driver, one directly behind the wheel, the other within the fascia, their glossy surfaces almost blending into the surrounding architecture. One is designed to be a driver attention monitor – with the potential to add more safety features in future. The other is a long flat instrument cluster.
“When the vehicle isn’t asking you for information, we don’t think the technology should constantly remind you it’s there. The screen almost disappears. It becomes another surface within the dashboard.”
Only when information is required does it appear on the surface.
The “squircle” steering wheel
That principle becomes most dramatic on the steering wheel. Eyes tells me that JLR calls the unusually shaped wheel shape, almost rectangular while still round, a “squircle”. The design allows easy visibility of the instrument cluster from any driver viewing angle, while also allowing easy entry and exit for the driver. As unusual as the wheel design is the set of controls on both sides of the wheel.
The controls appear as little more than unlabelled shapes. When they are needed, they light up to reveal functions determined by the driving context. In other words, they present the control required at that moment, instead of displaying every available option all the time.
“The steering wheel is obviously one of the places where you spend most of your time interacting with the vehicle,” says Eyes. “We looked carefully at how people actually hold the wheel. We’re not only thinking about where your hands are. We’re thinking about where your attention is.”
It is the black-panel idea transferred from the dashboard to the driver’s fingertips: technology concealed until the moment it is needed.
“Every additional decision requires mental effort. Every unnecessary graphic competes for attention. Every distraction has a cost. So our responsibility is to reduce that workload wherever we can.”
The steering wheel also demonstrates why Range Rover has retained physical interaction instead of shifting every function onto a touchscreen.
“We’ve had a lot of conversations over the last few years about physical controls. The answer isn’t that every button should disappear. Nor is it that every function belongs on a touchscreen. If something is quicker, safer and more intuitive as a physical control, then it deserves to remain a physical control.”
The choice depends on the task and the circumstances in which the driver will perform it. On the steering wheel, the context-sensitive illuminated shapes keep the controls close at hand while allowing the unused functions to disappear.
The steering wheel was shaped by the same customer research that informed the rest of the cabin. The team observed people using vehicles instead of relying solely on what they said they wanted.
“We’ve tried to become much more disciplined about what we present. Does the customer need this? Do they need it now? If they don’t, why are we showing it?”
In interface design, the approach is known as progressive disclosure. Controls and information appear when they become relevant, leaving the display free of functions that serve no immediate purpose.
“Not every function needs to be visible all the time. The cabin shouldn’t constantly ask questions the driver doesn’t need to answer.”
The centre infotainment touchscreen presented the most obvious test. It is usually the first piece of technology people notice in a new vehicle and often becomes the focal point of the dashboard. In the GT, it remains part of the interior architecture.
“The display isn’t the product,” says Eyes. “The experience is. When you stop looking at the screen itself and start looking at what it’s helping you achieve, the design decisions become much more straightforward. When somebody gets into the vehicle for the first time, we want as much of the experience as possible to feel intuitive.”
Cool and hot features
The Range Rover central infotainment display measures 13.1 inches, with a touchscreen that provides haptic feedback when a control is selected.
The centre console contains 6.6 litres of storage, along with two spacious wireless charging pads that hold phones securely and separate from other items. USB-C charging is available to both front occupants, and an elegant cover can be pulled over the phones. It is translucent, and ljghts up when the phone receives a call.
More surprising is a storage compartment that can heat, ventilate or cool its contents. Three settings allow it to keep food warm or drinks chilled, giving the centre console a function usually associated with a portable fridge.
The electric architecture allows the cabin floor to sit 37mm lower than usual, creating additional headroom and a greater sense of space. It also frees up a 97-litre luggage compartment beneath the bonnet.
An onboard neural processing unit supports voice recognition and personalisation. Natural-language requests can be used for infotainment, energy controls and seat settings, without forcing occupants to memorise fixed command phrases.
The camera system can display rocks and other obstacles beneath the GT when the vehicle is wading, while a digital rear-view display provides more information than a conventional mirror.
The five-year plan
The on-board software can develop throughout the life of the GT. New functions can be added through over-the-air updates, while the basic logic by which owners find and use them remains familiar.
“You can continue improving functionality,” says Eyes. “But the principles shouldn’t change. It’s relatively easy to impress somebody during the first five minutes. The real challenge is making the experience better after five years.
“Once you’ve established the overall philosophy, every individual decision becomes much easier. You don’t ask, ‘Can we add this feature?’ You ask, ‘Does this support the experience we’re trying to create?’
“If the answer was no, it didn’t matter how clever the technology was.”
The same scrutiny was applied to the visual elements around the displays. Removing something could require as much design and engineering work as adding it.
“We spent just as much time designing what you don’t see.”
Lighting, graphics, switches and finishes were treated as parts of one interior, with a common design language extending from the steering wheel to the centre display.
“We don’t really think about individual screens. We think about one interior. The customer doesn’t separate these things. They simply experience the interior. The customer doesn’t need to know how complicated it was. They only need to feel that it works.”
“The vehicle shouldn’t surprise you. It should reassure you.”
The GT introduces new digital capabilities within an interior intended to remain recognisably Range Rover. Its technology can develop without taking control of the architecture around it.
“When people hear the phrase ‘modern luxury’, they often think that means adding more technology. For us, it’s almost the opposite. It’s much harder to make something feel effortless.”
The GT is the first new Range Rover nameplate in a decade, and its interior offers the first view of how the brand intends to carry its identity onto the EMA platform. The black-panel displays, retention of physical controls and close attention to the steering wheel all serve the same purpose: allowing the technology to perform its role without taking over the cabin.
“The best compliment we can receive isn’t that somebody notices a particular screen, but that everything simply feels right,” says Eyes. “That’s when we’ve done our job.”