2014 Land Rover Range Rover Long Wheel Base Autobiography on 2040-cars

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With a new Jaguar and the Shell app, your car can pay for its own gas

Contactless payments are making their way into the car. Jaguar and Shell have the first major rollout, allowing you to pay for fuel through the car's touchscreen. Of course you'll still have to get out of the car to actually pump the fuel into the car, but hey, progress, right? Apple Pay and PayPal will be available payment methods from the start, and Android Pay will be added later. For this all to work, you'll need a new Jaguar (or Land Rover) with the InControl infotainment system, a connected phone with the InControl app and Shell app, some space in your tank, and some electronic money. When you pull up to a Shell station and launch the Shell app through the touchscreen, the car will use geolocation to figure out which station you're at and then prompt you to enter the pump number you're next to (don't want to pay for someone else's fuel now do you?). Once that's done, you tell the system how much fuel you want (it's not clear if you can just fill the tank like most normal people do) and then the screen in the car shows you a receipt; one is also sent to you via email. While this might just seem like trading one screen for another and entering info through your car instead of at the pump, contactless payments also have an added level of security over pulling out a credit card. (Credit card skimmers, which steal card data when you go to swipe at a kiosk or ATM, have been popular at gas stations.) It will also be welcome in the winter months, when you can limit your exposure time. Plus you'll never again have to respond to this incomplete sentence, which greets us at Shell stations everywhere: "Is this debit card?" InControl is available on every Jaguar and Land Rover model. And if you get this Shell app working on an F-Pace with the Jaguar Activity Key, you'll have the latest in minimal-touch technology. The system will roll out to people in the UK first and should arrive in the US later this year. Related Video: Jaguar Land Rover Technology Smartphone Luxury shell paypal

Jaguar SUV mule doing Ring testing in Evoque clothes

Jaguar has moved its Range Rover Evoque-bodied tests of the production C-X17 Concept from icy streets to the legendary Nürburgring, as work continues on the brand's first SUV.
Really, there's not a great deal of new stuff here. Based on the number plates, this is a different vehicle from the one we saw back in March, which we originally identified as the upcoming replacement for the Land Rover Freelander/LR2. The details, though, appear largely the same. The biggest distinction we can see between the March tests and this are the US-spec headlights, which add amber reflectors at their sides. Based on these shots, it does seem as if the C-X17 should be a fairly poised road vehicle, as the engineers hustle it around the 'Ring.
Of course, as soon our spies can capture images of a production-bodied C-X17, we'll be sure to pass those on to you. Until then, take a look up top for images of the Range Rover-bodied Jaguar as it tests at Germany's Nürburgring. You can also scroll down for our March images for the C-X17 mules testing on public roads.

A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.