Nissan demonstrates autonomous driving capabilities

Nissan has commenced demonstrations of a prototype vehicle equipped with its own in-house-developed, autonomous drive technologies as a showcase of the progress being made towards the goal of rolling out autonomous mobility services by 2027.

The Nissan Leaf prototype incorporates 14 cameras, 10 radars and six LIDAR sensors, allowing it to demonstrate Nissan’s progress in the field of autonomous driving, particularly within complex urban environments. The latest test vehicle features an array of roof mounted sensors, which significantly expand the detection area and enable more accurate detection of the vehicle’s surroundings.

This, more accurate detection, has resulted in enhanced recognition performance, behavioural prediction and judgement functions allowing the Leaf prototype to deliver smooth operation in a variety of complex scenarios. While travelling around the busy streets of Yokohama, near Nissan’s global headquarters in Japan, the Leaf prototype was able to smoothly demonstrate its ability to predict the behaviour of pedestrians, conduct lane changes when merging and judge when to safely enter intersections.

While the current demonstration is being conducted at SAE Level 2 equivalent with a safety driver present, Nissan aims to continue to expand functionality and begin  offering autonomous-drive mobility services within Japan from 2027, in conjunction with local authorities and transport operators.

Later this year, Nissan will commence trials in the Minato Mirai area and plans to progress to service demonstration tests within 2025 during which the level of autonomous driving functionality will be gradually increased while monitoring customer acceptance, with the aim of ultimately providing driverless services.

Nissan’s long-term vision is to empower mobility by solving transportation service issues faced by local communities. Local communities, particularly within Japan are facing several mobility challenges, such as driver shortages, a result of their ageing population. Autonomous driving is a supporting resolution to this challenge and one of Nissan’s wide variety of new services which aim to enable freedom of movement despite such challenges.