Jaguar could pay you every time you drive your car

Your driving data is important and Jaguar Land Rover wants to pay you for it. And the company will use it in a surprisingly worthwhile way.

Jaguar is willing to pay you to drive your car and it is all about connection, according to the British maker.

The company will pay drivers in cryptocurrency for providing road data including traffic conditions and pothole locations. The data will then be passed on to navigation companies and local authorities to help improve traffic flow and expedite road repairs.

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is developing a “Smart Wallet” to hold the cryptocurrency. It will allow users of connected cars to pay for a range of products including tolls, parking fees and electric vehicle charging.

Jaguar will pay you for driving your own car.

JLR enlisted financial tech company Iota to develop a “distributed ledger”, allowing micro transactions between connected devices.

Payments via this method incur no transaction fees and can be done faster than conventional methods. Iota believes there will be more than 75 billion connected devices by 2025.

JLR is testing the advanced connected tech at it software engineering base in Ireland. The maker has kitted out Jaguar F-Pace and Range Rover Velar SUVs with the smart wallet technology.

The move to create the smart wallet is part of JLR’s aim to have zero emissions, zero accidents and zero congestion.

JLR software architect Russell Vickers says: “In the future an autonomous car could drive itself to a charging station, recharge and pay, while its owner could choose to participate in the sharing economy — earning rewards from sharing useful data such as warning other cars of traffic jams.”

Jaguar Land Rover is working on a “Smart Wallet” to be used to pay for tolls and parking.

Chief of product engineering Nick Rodgers believes the JLR project is the start of making cars safer for everybody.

he says the company is “embracing autonomous, connected, electrified and shared mobility technology as we endeavour to make cars safer, cleaner and smarter for everybody”.

Iota executive Holger Kother says the partnership with JLR will benefit drivers massively by increasing the convenience of everyday activities.

“Our distributed ledger technology is perfectly suited to enable machine-to-machine payments for smart charging, parking and tolls, in addition to creating opportunities for drivers to earn their own digital currency,” he says.

“We are excited to partner with Jaguar Land Rover in implementing its Iota-powered car wallet, delivering a major convenience benefit for their customers worldwide.”