Eyeing a 2017 Land Rover? Experience it in VR First

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Jaguar Land Rover really, really wants you to experience its cars in virtual reality before you buy one. It used VR to unveil an electric concept car last fall and built a VR showroom app for the HTC Vive headset, and now it plans to bring similar apps and headsets to physical showrooms.

More than 1,500 Jaguar and Land Rover dealerships worldwide will get VR headsets this year, the company announced on Thursday. The experience will be a combination of 360-degree videos of the cars, which you can also view on a tablet, as well as short videos that take prospective customers under the hood using animations to explain vehicle features.

Each vehicle will have its own VR experience, starting with the 2017 Land Rover Discovery. The company said it plans to create new ones each time a new vehicle is launched.

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Jaguar Land Rover is the UK's largest auto maker, and it harnessed its reputation for luxury in the US to demo the I-Pace electric concept car last fall at the Los Angeles Auto Show. The audience donned HTC Vives to try out the interior of a virtual I-Pace, first sitting behind the wheel and then in the backseat.

The I-Pace experience, which is also available for Vive owners to download at the Viveport store, was the model for the expansion into showrooms. The showroom tablets, meanwhile, are designed to aid customers in selecting options for their vehicle with the dealer in addition to offering 360-degree videos.

Jaguar Land Rover isn't the first luxury car company to adopt VR as a sales tool. Cadillac is also rumored to be planning a transformation of some of its dealerships into VR-only showrooms with no physical inventory, and some Volvo dealerships have Microsoft HoloLens augmented reality headsets to help buyers customize their dream car.

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