“The
work of NASA and Nissan—with one directed to space and the other directed to
earth—is connected by similar challenges. The partnership will accelerate Nissan's
development of safe, secure and reliable autonomous drive technology that we
will progressively introduce to consumers beginning in 2016 up to 2020.”
President and CEO of Nissan
Motor Co, Carlos Ghosn commenting in a Thursday January 8th 2015 Press Release announcing
he partnership between Nissan and NASA
Nissan has done it again,
this time with the help of NASA (National
Aeronautical Space Administration).
They’ve
announced a partnership to develop self-driving Cars with the American space
Agency via a joint research project to be executed over the next five (5) years
as reported in the article “Nissan
and NASA Team up to develop Self-Driving Cars”, published January 9, 2015
By Stephen Edelstein, Digitaltrends
and “NASA
and Nissan Team Up to Build Self-Driving Vehicles for Earth and Mars”,
published By Alicia Adamczyk, Forbes.
The
finished product, an All-Electric Vehicle, most likely the Nissan Leaf as described in my blog article entitled
“Nissan
Debuts the 2013 Nissan Leaf - 228 km range good for commute to The House at the
End of the Street”.
This
new vehicle, expected to reach consumers by 2020, will be the result of five
(5) years of research collaboration between Nissan’s Silicon Valley
facility and the NASA Ames Research Center
at Moffett Field, California.
2020
is the year when All-Electric Vehicles sales analyst InsideEVS expects sales of All-electric
Vehicles in the US of A to reach some 500,000 per annum as per my prediction in
my blog article
entitled “InsideEVS
stats says All-Electric Vehicles Growing Strong - 500,000 by 2020 is a
potential Robotic Self-Driving Army”.
Albeit
NASA isn't necessarily associated with motor
vehicles, this project will bring their expertise in remote control over long
distances earth bound. Think Nissan Leaf being remotely controlled over a radio
link acting as couriers and controlled from a NOC (Network operation Center)
and you realize that this strange coupling isn't as strange as it looks.
With
their powers combined, they intend to have a working fleet of such remote controlled
self-driving vehicle at the end of the 2015. To Nissan’s credit, on their
own, they'd already demonstrated a self-driving Nissan Leaf back in September
2013 which they'd projected to be ready for consumers by 2020 as stated in the
article “The
rise of the machines: Nissan’s driverless cars to be showroom ready by 2020”,
published September 27, 2013 By Peter Braun, Digtialtrends.
Adding NASA may, therefore, really be just a PR (Public Relations) move to win over Americans who may see NASA as an American company and thus an alternative face of Nissan. They’ll draw upon NASA for technical know-how as well as assistance in navigating the regulatory roadblocks to getting self-driving All-Electric Vehicles on American roads.
Nissan, NASA and
Self-Driving Cars - Competition year ahead but have made little progress with All-Electric
Vehicles
Nissan is years behind
such projects Volvo's SARTRE (Safe Road Trains for the Environment) Project in
Europe since 2012 as stated in my blog article
entitled “Volvo
Testing Autonomous Motor Vehicles in Spain in Live Traffic - EU Project SARTRE
adds self-driving AI with smartphone Control”.
Google
is also working on fully-autonomous self-driving Cars, a fleet of which are suppose
to begin testing in 2015 as projected in my blog article
entitled “Google
100 strong Fully Autonomous All-Electric Vehicles launched – 25 mph Limit on AI
Chauffeur in 2015 with Black Boxes makes Crashes like aeroplanes”.
Nissan in fact will be rubbing shoulders with Google, who've rented access to NASA Ames Research Center to test their two-seater self-driving All-Electric Vehicle, which is the work of Google X Labs as noted in the article “NASA and Nissan Chase Self-Driving Car Technology”, published 13 Jan 2015 16:00 GMT By Jeremy Hsu, Spectrum IEEE.
In
fact, they’ve gone the extra mile to list out their partners who are helping
them to design their self-driving All-Electric Vehicle as per the article “ Self-Driving
Car Pals Revealed”, published 19 Jan 2015 15:00 GMT By Mark Harris, Spectrum IEEE.
So
interesting times are ahead for All-Electric Vehicles, specifically Self-Driving
ones by the end of 2015!
Google
is supposed to demonstrate their self-driving cars in 2015 and by 2020, Nissan in partnership
with NASA helping them with technical and regulatory
issue should have a working Self-Driving All-Electric Vehicle by 2020.
No comments:
Post a Comment