Land Rover took the wraps off the their latest concept car, the Discovery Vision Concept, a few days ahead of its official New York Auto Show debut. This car is to all intents and purposes the most important concept in the history of Land Rover, not just because of design, but also technology features.

Land Rover Discovery Vision Concept is packed with awesome technologies, all of them segment and world’s firsts. It comes with smart glass, intelligent laser headlamps and gesture control, a new Terrain Response system with Remote Control Drive, Laser Terrain Scanning and Transparent Bonnet head-up display, and last but not least, fold-and-slide configurable seating system for seven people, deployable event platform and social bench.

Above all that, the Discovery Vision previews the looks of the next generation Land Rover Discovery and the firm’s design language. The looks of the Disco Vision is a mix of Evoque at the front and Range Rover Sport at the back, all wrapped up in a classic Disco profile. It’s not as sexy as either of those cars, but better than the old Discos, that’s for sure.

But it’s the technologies packed in the Vision concept that boggles the mind most of all. The smart glass system brings the power of augmented reality to the entire glasshouse, and various functions, including the doors, indicators, headlamps and seatback screens, operated by Gesture Control. There is also a video call system between passengers through the seatback infotainment screens.

Then we have the Remote Control Drive enables which is an off-roader’s wet dream. It allows you to get out of the car and slowly guide the car over obstacles, as if you are winching it. There is also Laser Referencing, which utilises visible lasers to project markings, symbols and imagery onto ground surfaces, and of course, the transparent hood system which basically makes the front-end of the car invisible.

Land Rover Discovery Vision Concept is an awesome achievement for JLR. How much of its futuristic technologies will actually make it into the production version, we don’t know. But the fact that Land Rover is capable of developing such systems these days proves the future is quite bright for their products.