Self-Driving Tech Won’t Kill Driver’s Cars, Says Jaguar Strategy Chief

Young drivers and those not old enough to have taken the wheel yet don’t need to worry about losing great drives cars, according to the man leading Jaguar’s plans for future products.

Head of product strategy, Hanno Kirner, has been quoted by Autocar as saying that whatever happens with heavily driver-assisted cars or eventual self-driving tech, if such a thing is even possible, Jaguar will carry on making exciting driver’s cars.

That’s as long as there’s a demand, of course, but at the moment demand for fun cars is outstripping Jaguar’s production capacity to build them, Kirner added. Even the smartphone-obsessed generation will eventually want to drive. He said:

“Whether it is SVO recreating classics to modern standards or creating track-day specials, I think it will grow as autonomous driving becomes a regular part of lives.

“I don’t for one second think we’ll see a generation appear with no interest in cars. Driving enthusiasts will still exist and we’ll want to engineer cars for them.

“Today, we have more demand than we can satisfy for such cars and I don’t expect that to change. Yes, there is a generation that is more interested in their phones than anything else today, but they will grow older and want to drive one day.”

Autocar also repeats the suggestion from two months ago that Jaguar is looking to slim down its current range of performance badges. Apparently, having S, R and SVR grades of spiciness is confusing buyers, so the R grade found on Alex’s wonderful F-Type long-termer is on the way out.

Source: Autocar