London - This, according to Jaguar Land Rover, is the steering wheel of the future, and it may wind up being the only part of the car you actually own.
It’s called Sayer - a voice-activated, intelligent, connected companion able to carry out hundreds of tasks. The idea is that it would live in your home, as your portal to membership of the company’s on-demand service club, which would offer either conventional ownership or the option of sharing the car with others in your community.
Jaguar Land Rover’s ‘futurists’ foresee a fleet of networked electric cars where you don’t own a car, but instead call up the vehicle of your choice where and when you need it.
Need to be at a meeting two hours away from home by 8am tomorrow? Simply ask Sayer, in the comfort of your living room, and it will work out when you get up, when a car needs to autonomously arrive at your door and even advise which parts of the journey you might enjoy driving yourself - and then it will book the vehicle and set an alarm to wake you in good time!
Sayer has been designed to look like a piece of sculpture - not everybody wants pieces of cars lying around their home - and is named after Malcolm Sayer, a Jaguar designer from 1951 to 1970, who was responsible, among others, for the C-Type, D-Type and E-Type.