Another Automaker Could Beat Tesla To The Self-Driving Punch

The world’s automakers are fast at work making your job as a driver “easier” and hopefully safer with the latest self-driving technology in development. Tesla has had its models trained on public road data for years now, and Google’s Waymo startup has clocked millions of miles with its self-driving vehicles, as well. Mercedes-Benz has been pushing its advanced technology against European legislators to try and get its tech on the roads sooner. And then there’s pretty much everyone else. No matter the company, all of them are seemingly still a couple of years away from deploying self-driving vehicles on a national or international scale.

Now, Nissan enters the fray, promising useful self-driving technology it’s developing will hit the streets somewhere in the world in 2027. Nissan has been testing its self-driving tech since 2017. Details are slim for now, but the automaker promises its next-generation ProPilot technology will implement updated LiDAR sensors, and feature artifical intelligence programming from AI developer company Wayve. It’s not immediately clear which vehicles will get the updated tech, nor which markets these vehicles will deploy in.

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Nissan’s Goals For Self-Driving Tech

Based on previous updates from Nissan in March, it’s likely the first market for Nissan’s new ProPilot tech will be Japan. The automaker recently claimed it was the first to have a vehicle operate on Japanese public roads with no driver. It’s possible this debut will introduce a new mobility service operated by Nissan, as it confronts Japan’s concerns about empowering greater mobility for all and “resolving transportation service challenges faced by local communities, such as driver shortages resulting from an aging population.”

The next-gen ProPilot tech will be informed by Nissan’s research in Yokohama, Japan, as well as from the Nissan Advanced Technology Center in Silicon Valley, and from participation in the UK’s evolveAD project. Nissan is planning service tests involving approximately 20 vehicles in Yokohama starting this year, and it’s building out an operational framework and operating ecosystem along with it. It’s been announced that there will be remote takeover control of the vehicle if needed, meaning there will be human monitors of the tech as it’s deployed.

Nissan’s latest development vehicle for its ProPilot tech is the best-selling Serena van, which boasts 14 cameras, nine radar sensors, and six LiDAR sensors.