Yokohama, Japan — July 14, 2016 — A new vehicle with autonomous capabilities will soon be available for sale in Japan. Nissan’s new Serena, scheduled to go on sale in Japan in late August, will come equipped with the company’s ProPILOT autonomous drive technology.
This makes Nissan the first Japanese automaker to introduce a combination of steering, accelerator and braking that can be operated in full automatic mode. However, this is not a fully autonomous vehicle. ProPILOT is specifically designed for highway use in single-lane traffic.
Nissan plans to introduce the tech in other vehicles, including the Qashqai in Europe in 2017. More intriguing, the company says it plans to bring multi-lane autonomous driving technology to market in 2018. This would allow the car to change lanes, something the ProPILOT technology is not set up to do. Autonomous driving on city streets is still planned for launch in 2020.
A statement from the company says it is “carrying out intensive studies of driving conditions in various regions so that ProPILOT will be well suited to the conditions in the markets in which it will be launched.” Nissan has made official statements regarding ProPILOT technology being introduced in Europe, and the company has also mentioned launching ProPILOT in the US and China.
You can see more on the ProPILOT system in the video below.
