Your Land Rover Discovery can be operated by phone

There are many activities during which you shouldn’t use your mobile phone. Driving a car, flying a plane, um, showering…

We’d also add skydiving to that list, for your attention should be entirely on pulling the cord that will deploy the parachute upon which your life relies.

Try telling Land Rover ambassador (and famed urine-drinker) Bear Grylls, who has been showing off some of JLR’s new tech while descending rapidly through the clouds. It’s a smart phone app linked to the new Discovery, which allows you to fold its seven seats up and down remotely.

And Bear has been testing it up in the sky, while diving with the Royal Navy Parachute Display Team, the idea being that all of those seats need to be upright and ready for everyone to clamber aboard and drive back to base.

Over to Bear, who definitely said this about the technology: “I’m not sure many people will be using it in such a manner but the technology to operate the car remotely in this way will undoubtedly be a real winner for busy families who want to be prepared.”

The tech also shows the Discovery’s location, and allows you to fiddle with the air con and check the fuel level.

Following a look at its snout, it’s our second teaser of the new Disco this week, ahead of a full reveal on September 28. How many more celebrity cameos we can expect in the meantime is as yet unknown…