Nissan will start selling unmanned vehicles in 2020

^{Self-Driving Nissan Leaf Testing}

Google may not be the first to launch fully autonomous unmanned vehicles to the mass market. In seven years, Nissan intends to do this. Surely, among other well-known automakers, there is now a kind of race that will be able to quickly develop the technology to a commercial level. Audi and Toyota, among others, have already shown their prototypes. Obviously, the future is for unmanned vehicles, and many are now working in this direction.

The official press release said that by 2020, Nissan will prepare the “revolutionary commercially available” Autonomous Drive technology for “multiple car models”.

The implementation of this program has already begun. Full testing of technology will begin in 2014. The goal is to complete the creation of an autonomous engine within “two model generations”, that is, in a few years.
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The Japanese automaker also announced the start of cooperation with several world universities that conduct research in this area: Stanford, Oxford, Tokyo University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University and many others, and also invites other universities and technology start-ups to cooperate.

There are several shots on the video with a test of an unmanned Nissan car on general roads, where it maneuvers by itself: it slows down before a traffic light, overtakes, dodges a pedestrian who has jumped onto the road, passes a vehicle at an unregulated intersection, and parks in reverse.



Nissan is considered one of the main innovators in the automotive market. For example, the Nissan Leaf model is the most popular electric car in the world. With a cost of about $ 32,000, it is much more affordable than Tesla's “luxury” models.

As for the Autonomous Drive technology, it can not only be installed in its models, but also transferred under license to other automakers. By the way, Nissan together with Renault is a co-owner of the Russian AvtoVAZ plant, and in the future it is going to almost completely redeem it from the Russian state , this is quite a suitable place for experiments.