Nissan has pledged to offer robotic, autonomous vehicles by 2020. Driver-less Nissan Leaf test vehicles are being tested under many conditions.
Nissan tests vehicles in a dedicated autonomous driving city in Japan. The track has real houses for life-like self-driven car testing without using public roads for maximum safety.
In late 2013, a Nissan Leaf with Autonomous Drive with sensor, steering, acceleration and lane change features was auto-driven on Japan’s Sagami Expressway near Tokyo. Nissan’s vice chairman Toshiyuki Shiga was a passenger.
A Nissan Leaf with the Autonomous Drive system was demonstrated in the United Sates in Newport Beach, CA during 2013 Nissan 360 where the car avoided crash test pedestrians when then jumped from behind parked cars and parked itself.
Nissan’ auto-driven cars will priced reasonably reported the company with affordable prices by two vehicle generations.
J.D. Power U.S. Automotive Emerging Technologies Study found that one out of every five consumers was interested in a fully autonomous vehicle.
CarInsurance.com found that 90% of those surveyed said they would at least consider a self-driving car if owning one produced an 80% reduction in car insurance rates. Another enticement for driver-less cars is if they could used special lane such as the carpool lance. KPMG and the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) found that drivers are more likely to want to own an autonomous car if they could travel in a dedicated lane and with 50% less travel time.
Nissan engineers have been researching the technology for years, working with MIT, Stanford, Oxford, Carnegie Mellon and the University of Tokyo