Land Rover Discovery SVX could bring high-tech off-roading

Britain’s 4WD brand has told English car magazine Autocar that an SVX badge is being considered to “amplify” its off-roading capabilities.

SVX vehicles would be developed by the same Special Vehicle Operations division set up by the Jaguar-Land Rover group for its fastest models, which wear the SVR badge, like the Range Rover Sport SVR.

The Discovery has always offered extensive off-road capability, so special features would be focused around advanced technology that make all-terrain driving easier.

The 2014 Discovery Vision concept that previewed styling and technical pointers for the fifth-generation ‘Disco’ included laser headlights that can extend the field of vision at night by 300 metres, laser terrain scanning that uses infra-red foglamps to provide detailed topographical information to the driver, and most cleverly a Transparent Bonnet system.

The latter feature employs a camera under the Discovery’s grille to relay video of the terrain being covered to the head-up display (HUD). This imagery is projected onto the HUD to allow the driver to ‘see through’ the bonnet for a greater understanding of the surface and potential obstacles.

The new Land Rover Discovery is expected to be unveiled towards the end of 2016 before going on sale in Australia sometime in 2017. It will shed substantial weight compared with the outgoing model.

Click here to read the full review on the current generation Land Rover Discovery range.