As promised, Nissan has demonstrated its latest autonomous drive technology on public roads in Europe for the first time. The demo took part in the east of London. Prior to this, the carmaker has conducted public-road testing of self-driving tech in Japan and the US.
Participants in the passenger and rear seats were given the opportunity to experience the tech, which consists of millimeter wave radar, laser scanners, cameras, high-speed computer chips, and a specialised Human Machine Interface, just to name a few.
All the above combine to allow the vehicle to operate in an autonomous manner on both highway and city roads, including runabouts, once the destination points are entered into the navigation system.
The London test follows recent announcements that both the updated Qashqai and the new Nissan Leaf, both coming in the near future, will be equipped with Nissan’s ProPILOT autonomous drive tech to enable single lane autonomous driving on motorways. That’s the first of four steps in Nissan’s autonomous drive plan (see the fifth image in the gallery below).
In July 2016, Nissan launched the fifth-gen Serena MPV in Japan, its first model to be fitted with ProPILOT. ProPILOT went on to win the 2016-2017 Japan Car of the Year Innovation Award.
Nissan has plans to extend this technology to more models in Europe, Japan, China and the US, with 10 models to be launched by 2020 by the Renault-Nissan Alliance. A multi-lane autonomous driving technology will enable automatic lane changes on highways and is planned for introduction in 2018 while autonomous driving on urban roads and in intersections is planned for launch in 2020.
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Wow, so far ahead. Our Proton and Perodua, we are still fighting for basic VSC in the car, don’t even talk about other tech
Support what my boss said
Unfortunately some jepunis overlord makes still dun have VSC in some models
Developing the autonomous hardware and firmware is a great effort for better auto experience and safety. However, there are too much uncertainties on real world. For such as bad pavement, no marking on the road, heavy rain, unexpected other vehicle’s maneuver/motion etc posibbly render the system useless.
By now, it can happen in a controlled and purposely built city infrastructure with only autonomous vehicle roaming within.
At this stage, all the hypes were just marketing gimmicks. Which, to impress public for the brand’s engineering prowess