@Nissan, @NASA and Self-Driving Nissan Leaf by 2020

“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.