Reinventing the wheel

Jaguar dropped a bomb with the launch of its new brand identity and Vision Type 00 concept car late last year. The British carmaker, long known for roaring V8 sportscars, is reinventing itself with a new logo and dramatic styling renaissance, both of which polarised opinion at their unveiling in December at Miami Art Week.

The new “jaGuar” logo jarringly introduces an upper-case G in the middle of a lower-case word and is mounted on an electric car with a brutalist design that, while admittedly very striking, has no stylistic link to its storied past.

The Vision Type 00 makes a statement and copies nothing, Jaguar says unapologetically. Perhaps such a radical reboot is needed for a marque whose sales have narrowed to a relative trickle. Jaguar wants to start with a clean slate — we’ll see how that pans out when a four-door electric GT based on the concept car hits the streets in late 2026.

Perhaps Jaguar is on to something, as brands need to find new ways to differentiate themselves and non-innovators may be left behind. The British marque’s extreme makeover takes place in an automotive market segueing towards an electric future, self-driving vehicles, and software-defined cars. Driven by stringent antipollution laws that will ban petrol and diesel cars, the age of the internal combustion engine is headed into a smoke-free sunset in the next few years as battery-powered cars come to the fore.

The problem with electric vehicles (EVs) is that, while petrol or diesel engines have a lot to do with the character of a car in how it drives and sounds, most EVs feel much the same, except for varying output levels. Gadgets and user interfaces will therefore assume a more important role in making EVs stand out from one another — apart from styling.

One of the emerging trends is the so-called software-defined car, which can be updated with enhanced features via over-the-air (OTA) updates instead of having to change physical parts, much like smartphones. It allows carmakers to offer ever more features as added-cost subscriptions that can be activated OTA, as BMW has already done with items such as heated seats.

In terms of user interfaces, most carmakers are simply in a contest to see who can make the biggest infotainment screen. Others are being more innovative, such as BMW, which premiered its new Panoramic iDrive system at January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It has a head-up display across the bottom of the windscreen visible to all car occupants and will be introduced in all new BMW models from the end of 2025.

Controversially, it also replaces the physical iDrive knob that has been a BMW staple for the past 24 years, and there has been consumer pushback against overly hi-tech car interiors, as it is distracting for drivers to muddle through digital menus instead of pushing physical buttons. BMW says the Panoramic iDrive is controlled by a new multifunction steering wheel using illuminated buttons with haptic feedback and a relief-like surface, which makes it easy to use without the driver needing to divert their gaze from the road. Some carmakers aim to do away with buttons or icons altogether, instead controlling car features with sophisticated voice-activated virtual assistants.

Artificial intelligence allows these onboard buddies to converse in an almost human way, much like Michael Knight did with KITT in the 1980s Knight Rider TV series. The breakthrough to fully self-driving cars like KITT is taking longer than expected, but that future is edging closer with improved robotics and machine learning. The lane-keeping aids, automatic emergency braking, and adaptive cruise control of today’s cars will eventually progress to fully robotised vehicles that lack steering wheels and other driver controls.

Perhaps when that time comes, many cars will become generic self-driven pods, mere mobile lounges that take us to our destinations. When we lose the emotional connection of driving cars, perhaps we won’t particularly care what they look like either. Jaguar, for one, wants to keep the passion alive for now.

From the February edition of Wanted, 2025