JLR to hire sacked tech workers across Europe to develop self-driving cars

TATA MOTORS-owned Jaguar Land Rover plans to recruit 100 more engineers at three new hubs across Europe to develop self-driving cars, The Telegraph reported.

The company plans to hire tech workers who have been laid off recently for its facilities in Munich, Madrid, and Bologna in Italy.

According to JLR, the new tech hubs are part of its multi-year partnership with AI and computing specialist Nvidia, through which it is working to develop and deliver next-generation automated driving systems and digital services.

The British carmaker already employs 1,100 technology-focused engineers for future products, and the latest hiring-spree will strengthen its position, the report added.

The focus areas in the new tech hubs will be systems and features, software, verification and validation, and hardware.

The existing tech hugs of JLR are in Portland in the US, Budapest, Shannon in Ireland, Shanghai, Bengaluru in India, and Manchester. They feed data into JLR’s Advanced Product Creation Centre in Gaydon, Warwickshire.

According to The Telegraph, the company targets to bring more of the software development it does to make its cars park, drive and brake by themselves in-house as it focuses on passenger experience and to cut dependence on suppliers.

“We are harnessing talent in autonomous technologies around the world to develop new autonomous technologies for our future products, which will deliver a truly modern luxury experience for our clients,” Thomas Müller, product engineering director at JLR, was quoted as saying.

“Software is essential for us to deliver a fully connected experience for our clients, and creating global engineering hubs will enable seamless hybrid working across several locations and ensure we harness the best talent for our business.”

Self-driving cars will rely on a variety of cameras and other sensors, combined with lots of processing power and offsite data storage in order for the systems controlling the car to learn over time.

Major tech companies including Google, Amazon and Facebook are axing staff in thousands across the world to cut expenses.