If you’ve ever taken a long road trip and tried to change the track on your smartphone, only to end up nearly veering into the divider, Jaguar Land Rover is looking out for you.
The car company announced today the upcoming launch of justDrive, a smartphone app that integrates multiple functions into a single voice-controlled system. The app, which will be available early next year, will combine “everything that you want to use it for into one super app that’s a very easy voice-controlled process,” said Robert Filipovic, the automaker’s general manager for product planning in North America.
The justDrive app was developed by CloudCar, a Silicon Valley-based company focused on connected driving. The app will be backwards compatible with any Jaguar Land Rover car currently using CloudCar’s InControl system, which was first available earlier this year for some models, and will be an option in all Jaguar and Land Rover cars by model year 2016.
Peter Virk, Jaguar Land Rover’s head of connected technology and apps, said the hands-free part is especially important.
“We want our customers to keep their eyes on the road and their hands on the steering wheel,” he said. With justDrive, the aforementioned flipping through songs on your device won’t be necessary, he said. “You can literally just say, ‘Play a song by Coldplay,’ and bang, it does it.” The vehicles touch screen can also be used for navigation, Virk added.
In addition to media, the app can also be used socially, to dictate a text, or a tweet. It also offers the start of car-to-car communication, Filipovic noted — allowing the app to communicate with another car to give your location, or destination information.
The justDrive app will be available for both iOS and Android.
