Nissan just got serious about autonomous cars. The automaker is promising to deliver the first "commercially-viable" self-driving system by 2020, and it won't just be limited to a single model -- Nissan says several vehicles will come equipped with its Autonomous Drive technology.
Nissan has begun working with dozens of research and educational institutions to make autonomous vehicles a reality, including MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Oxford, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Virginia Tech, and nearly every major university in Japan.
"In 2007 I pledged that – by 2010 – Nissan would mass market a zero-emission vehicle," Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn said in the announcement. "Today, the Nissan LEAF is the best-selling electric vehicle in history. Now I am committing to be ready to introduce a new ground-breaking technology, Autonomous Drive, by 2020, and we are on track to realize it."
For the past several years, Nissan -- and its luxurious siblings at Infiniti -- have been one of the leaders in driver assistance systems that keep hapless drivers in their lanes and maintaining a safe distance from other vehicles. Those systems have helped stoke the development of autonomous driving systems, with 360-degree cameras, radar, and laser systems that are already available on a range of Nissan's products.
The next step is tying all these technologies together, and with the development of a dedicated autonomous vehicle testing facility -- essentially a small scale faux city -- due to be completed next year in Japan, Nissan fully expects to deliver on its promise. And make it affordable.
"Nissan's autonomous driving will be achieved at realistic prices for consumers," the automaker stated in its release. "The goal is availability across the model range within two vehicle generations." That's ambitious. But it's best not to bet against Ghosn and Co.
