The new Nissan Serena features the company’s ProPILOT autonomous driving technology, which is a little limited in terms of capabilities for now. However, the Japanese carmaker has revealed that in the future, the system will be able to do so much more.
Currently, ProPILOT is able to drive on roads with a single lane in each direction, but by 2018, Nissan plans to improve the system so that it can take over on multiple-lane roads. Beyond that, by 2020, the system will be advanced enough to handle city intersections without any human intervention.
On the new Serena, the system is engaged via steering-mounted controls, and works at speeds between 30 km/h and 100 km/h. The system is capable of maintaining that speed or apply the brakes on its own to keep a safe distance behind other cars. Additionally, the system can hold the car in traffic and has a lane keep feature as well.
Unlike Tesla’s Autopilot system, drivers will still be required to keep their hands on the wheel and be prepared to take over if required should there be any technical problems with the ProPILOT feature.
The Nissan Serena is the only MPV to feature the system for now, but Nissan plans to introduce ProPILOT on the European-market Qashqai by 2017 and will eventually offer it on cars in the US and Chinese markets as well.
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Must also have system to detect motorcycles especially when they don’t follow the traffic or lane direction.
inb4 skynet
Nice! but we don’t have good lane markings here.
They must test auto pilot in Malaysia and score 60% then it could work reliably in western country.
when the new Nissan Serena will be launched in Malaysia? Holding my purchase now waiting for this new Nissan Serena…
Good effort by Nissan. But it is still a half baked system. What’s the point in having it if you still need to keep your hands on the wheel? Might just as well ask you to keep concentrating on the road and be prepared to take over in an emergency.
But what’s going to happen is that after using and trusting the system for 50 trips or 100 trips, you will probably not be focusing on the road on the 51 trip or 101 trip and that’s when the system will fail and take your life with it, similar to Tesla.
There are too many unpredictable situations which can occur. Autonomous driving is still at its infancy stage and trusting it too early could cost you your life. Beware, read more about the Tesla accident fatality and make your own conclusions.