The Qashqai crossover will be Nissan’s first vehicle in Europe to feature autonomous “Piloted Drive” technology when it rolls off the line next year, Nissan has announced.
Made in the UK, the refreshed Qashqai will be equipped with “Piloted Drive 1.0”, a feature that allows cars to drive autonomously in a single lane in heavy traffic conditions on highways. Thousands of hours of testing and multiple sensors on the car ensure that the system anticipates its surroundings correctly, Nissan says.
The announcement marks an important step in the brand’s commitment to making autonomous drive tech accessible to all. Nissan has already set out its commitment to launch a range of vehicles with autonomous drive capabilities by 2020, including vehicles that will be able to safely navigate city intersections.
Over the next four years, Nissan will launch cars with increased autonomous capabilities like “multiple-lane control,” which can autonomously negotiate hazards and change lanes during highway driving. And by the end of the decade, the Japanese brand will introduce “inner-city” autonomy, enabling vehicles to negotiate city cross-roads and intersections without driver intervention.
The tech will be installed on mainstream, mass-market cars at affordable prices, with Piloted Drive 1.0 coming to Japan in 2016. An autonomous Nissan Leaf is already on test on Japanese roads, and a planned on-road demo event in Europe this year will showcase the tech to the continent.
“It’s a car people love. It’s a car people trust. It pioneered the crossover boom, and now it will spearhead Nissan’s move towards launching a range of vehicles with autonomous drive capabilities from 2017. Yet again, we are taking technology normally found in premium cars and making it accessible to millions of motorists,” said Paul Willcox, chairman of Nissan Europe.
“The introduction of Piloted Drive technologies will be an evolution, not a revolution as the building blocks for this are already in place in many of our cars today through our Safety Shield Technology. With the driver in control, we want to remove the pain-points of being behind the wheel, like navigating heavy traffic, to put the excitement back into driving,” added Wilcox.
At the 2015 Tokyo Motor Show, Nissan displayed the IDS Concept, which the company says embodies its vision of the future of autonomous driving and zero emission EVs. Nissan is of course a pioneer and leader in electric cars – together with Alliance partner Renault, it has shifted nearly 300,000 EVs since the first Leaf was sold in San Francisco in December 2010.
GALLERY: Nissan Qashqai
GALLERY: Nissan IDS Concept
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dear ETCM, please bring this to Bolehland..
These high tech cars are prohibited until Matt Damon bring back Proton EV/Hybrid from Mars. That’s why we can’t launch the new Prius here.
The Qashqai should have been here on Malaysian shores to fight with the likes of HRV and CX3… but who knows what TC is thinking?
ETCM should bring this baby to Bolehland.. I saw a lot of Singapore reg plat of new Nissan Qashqai in JB… I bet Qashqai can beat HRV and CX3 or even maybe Renault Captur and Peug 2008 too…
Tat is one super hard to pronounce name. Cant even spell it out without looking at the word.
something to ponder – Renault owns Nissan but why it let Nissan introduced this technology instead?
i think it is because Japanese market does like to experiment with weird technologies and such.
you know things like ABS, 4 Wheel Steering, satnav, VTEC or VVT is something they had experience in 1980s – so far ahead of other car markets
Jepunis experiment with tech.
French experiment with design.
Proton experiments with old generation jepunis models
We only can see new models after a year it’s was launch in Indonesia and Thailand. Maybe our market is much smaller than their market. And the best reason, to protect Proton and Perodua market.
Just to check, when will Nissan QashQai will in Malaysia