Jaguar Land Rover Special Vehicle Operations (SVO) has designed and engineered a bespoke version of the new Land Rover Discovery for use by the Austrian Red Cross. ‘The car is called Project Hero’, and it’s an advanced communication vehicle, created to support Jaguar Land Rover’s partnership with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the world’s largest humanitarian network. SVO collaborated with the Austrian Red Cross to develop a unique Land Rover that will be used by their emergency response teams. It is hoped it will help the Red Cross save lives by speeding up response times to disasters.
Project Hero is the first with a roof-mounted drone. A fully integrated landing system featuring self-centering and magnetic retention technology is a world-first that enables the drone to land on Project Hero when the vehicle is in motion. With the drone airborne, live footage can be transmitted to the Red Cross’s emergency response teams, helping them respond more quickly and effectively to landslides, earthquakes, floods and avalanches. Dramatic landscape changes can make maps redundant, which adds to the danger and difficulty of finding and rescuing survivors, so the drone’s bird’s-eye view will allow rescuers to investigate an emergency scene from a safe distance. Project Hero is based on the 3.0-litre TD6 engine-powered version of the new Land Rover Discovery. Project Hero will be based at the Austrian Red Cross training centre in Erzberg, in the mountainous Eisenerz mining area, and in Vienna, for 12 months from June 2017.
