  Nissan Autonomous Drive Leaf. Click image to enlarge |
Review and photos by Paul Williams
Newport Beach, California – Imagine you get into your car, start it up, set the GPS to your destination, press “Go” and let the car take it from there. It’ll deal with traffic, avoid obstacles, stop and go at traffic lights, and use the most efficient route to get you where you’re going. Then it’ll park itself.
It won’t hit anybody. In fact, it won’t ever hit anything! Maybe the audio system will ask you what kind of music you’d like as you yawn contentedly while reading the news on the vehicle display. Maybe gourmet coffee will emerge from a dispenser where the gearshift used to be.
Okay, maybe not the coffee. But overall, the above scenario is not so far-fetched, and faster than you may think, we’re approaching something like it with vehicles that can drive autonomously.
It would, of course, be a transportation revolution, and it becomes possible because of the “perfect storm” of technologies that are now becoming commonplace in modern cars. By combining and supplementing the existing array of electronics and sensors with which modern cars are equipped, we take them to the next level, as it were. Cars can drive themselves; they can drive you!
Car enthusiasts may lament, but with such vehicles it’s not so much about the drivetrain anymore. On 21st Century roads, it looks like software will trump hardware.
At the 2013 Nissan 360 event held in Newport Beach, California, Nissan demonstrated its “Autonomous Drive” Leaf, transporting occupants around a closed circuit, avoided “crash test” pedestrians as they suddenly appeared from behind parked cars, cleverly and safely swerved around obstacles and parked itself in a simulated parking lot (identifying a parking space as another vehicle backed out of it, waiting for the space to clear, sizing up the opening and reversing into it).
   Nissan Autonomous Drive Leaf. Click image to enlarge |
It was (almost…) a set and forget experience, as the Nissan engineer in the driver’s seat activated the autonomous driving system, took his hands off the wheel, and engaged his three passengers in discussion about the car. Every once in a while he checked the Leaf’s progress, but his “auto-pilot” was managing just fine.
Lane Departure Prevention (already available in current Infiniti vehicles) keeps the car between the lane markings, making subtle corrections if it drifts over the line. Radar-based Collision Avoidance, Blind Spot Detection and Intervention and Distance Control Assist (also available in current Infiniti vehicles) will prevent your vehicle from colliding with another by braking as required to change the car’s direction or stop it in an emergency situation. Electric power steering, anti-lock brakes, vehicle stability control, back-up alerts, self-parking, intelligent cruise control… these are technologies that many new cars currently posses and their development and inclusion as part of a self-driving system is a logical outcome, when you think about it. And believe me, it’s not only Nissan/Infiniti that’s thinking about it.
 Nissan Autonomous Drive Leaf. Click image to enlarge |
Other companies like Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volkswagen, General Motors, Volvo and Toyota are also developing autonomous vehicles, with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) predicting that up to 75 percent of vehicles will be autonomous by 2040. According to Nissan, it will be ready with “commercially viable Autonomous Drive in multiple vehicles by the year 2020.”
That’s not far away, and you can see that even now, a person could conceivably let an appropriately equipped car do the driving in certain conditions, so it’s not much of a stretch to extend and expand these technologies toward a vehicle purpose-designed to do just that.
What does this mean for people who love cars and love driving them? People who like the rush of shifting manually and the visceral experience of raspy flat-six or muscular V8? Maybe there will be private facilities where such legacy vehicles can be driven; maybe autonomous vehicles will have a manual override that can be engaged on designated “self-drive” roads.
Then again, maybe with autonomous vehicles it will be all about design, convenience, comfort, being connected, being chauffeured. The autonomous car of the future: it’s a whole new take on the notion of a “mobile device.”
 Nissan Autonomous Drive Leaf. Click image to enlarge |
Nissan points out that there are six million crashes in the US each year, which cost $160 billion and are the top cause of death for persons 4 to 34 years old. Presumably, autonomous vehicles (can yours be retrofitted? Doubtful, but maybe there’s a business opportunity…) will significantly reduce the number of crashes as long as the electronics do their job.
I must admit, this has kind of crept up on me. I’ve known that cars are all about software for a while, and I get the need for connectedness through the latest (imperfect) communications interfaces. But we auto writers are still feted by manufacturers who focus on performance, capability, style and (ironically) independence. It’s the excitement of driving that drives most auto writers and most marketers, too.
