The future is here. Sort of.
Japanese automotive giant Nissan has announced that, by February, it will have fully-autonomous vehicles on the road in London. The autonomous cars, that see autonomous driving hardware grafted onto a Nissan LEAF, will be providing on-road demonstrations to show how far along Nissan is in terms of autonomous driving technology.
The autonomous LEAFs (or leaves?) will be taking government officials, technical experts, and safety experts on ride-alongs, to experience the technology in the real world. These will be, the press release reads, the first demonstrations of Nissan’s autonomous drive technology on public roads in Europe. This latest development comes hot on the heels of the firm’s declaration that the facelift Qashqai and new-generation Nissan LEAF, both due soon, will come with autonomous driving technology which will allow it to cruise on motorways (albeit only in one lane).
The announcement of the autonomous LEAF program was made at the Nissan Technical Centre Europe (NTCE), where the facility welcomed the UK’s Secretary of State for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy, the Rt. Hon. Greg Clark. The Secretary remarked, “Government and industry are working together to build on our world class reputation for excellence as a leading location for automotive R&D and manufacturing. We want to see centres, like Nissan’s here in Cranfield [Bedfordshire], continue to develop, making us a world leader in the development and testing of auto technology so we can anchor the next generation of vehicle manufacturing and its supply chain here in the UK.”
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