[Nissan Qashqai News]

Nissan plans to launch a Semi-Autonomous Qashqai and its set to hit the European market in 2017. The Renault Nissan Partnership has already announced their plan to launch 10 autonomous and affordable models back in January this year and they plan to complete said launch by 2020. These models are set to hit the United States, Europe, Japan and China markets by then.

The Semi-Autonomous Qashqai is going to be the first crossover to be equipped with their new “single-lane control” called the Piloted Drive 1.0. This system is supposed to drive your car autonomously in a single lane in both traffic heavy conditions and on the highway.

Nissan will be adding this feature to more than just the Qashqai and more improvements are on the way. Following the single-lane control system is more autonomous feature called the “multiple-lane control”. This second feature is expected to come out in 2018 and with it, your car will be able to negotiate hazards by itself and change lanes on the highway.

Finally, by the time 2020 comes around Nissan will release the “intersection autonomy” system. This new system will equip the cars with the capability to navigate city intersections and congested urban traffic without any input from you. Combine all three and you’ll have a fully autonomous car.

Before the Piloted Drive 1.0 Qashqai launches in Europe, it will first be made available in Japan but don’t worry. Nissan will have an on-road demo in Europe this year before it goes on sale.

Nissan was the first manufacturer to make electric vehicles affordable for the masses and Paul Willcox, Chairman of Nissan Europe, announced the same sentiment when it comes to autonomous vehicles: “(Nissan Qashqai) is a car people love. It's a car people trust. It pioneered the crossover boom, and now it will spearhead Nissan's move towards launching a range of vehicles with autonomous drive capabilities from 2017. Yet again, we are taking technology normally found in premium cars and making it accessible to millions of motorists.”

Who’s interested?

 

[NissanDriver]

Single lane control is a big one for me since being on a busy highway each way for 45 minutes at a time can get tiring. This will allow me to safely look at m phone and tablet while in those conditions.

 

[mr.smith]

There is something really strange about letting go of the wheel completely. It doesn't feel right. That'll be a ting that we recount to younger people a decade or two into the future.

 

[NissanDriver]

It sure will take some getting used to especially as you go through turns and even take over other vehicles in the city and highway. Crazy to think that in another 15-20 years we might not think much of it at all, compared to now and the next 5 years when it will be a quite a big deal.

 

[Aries]

We will always remember driving. What I find more interesting is the people being born now who will come into adulthood without ever needing to drive. To them, cars that you have to drive will be like pagers, or fax machines, or type writers are to us.

 

[NissanDriver]

yeah it will be quite the change for them.

some might still like being in control of a car and own something older to their liking, there's already a lot of people that want to hold onto older cars till who knows when.

 

[Aries]

I think that young people now will hold onto old cars more but the young people of tomorrow won't care much I would think. Way later maybe cars will have a resurgence like vinyl records.

 

[mr.smith]

I can totally see the cars of the future being like vinyl. It's strange to think about though. It will almost be a hipster thing. lol

 

[NissanDriver]

Aside from what this thread is on, holding onto old cars is good for those that want ownership at potentially its cheapest, but owning an older car isn't for everyone, you need to stay on top of maintenance and basically make sure you take care of it very well, a lot of people can't do that.

 

[Sashimi]

I assume Nissan is pretty good with reliability. My friend Had a Nissan and they tried to drive it into the ground before switching to a new car but after 10 years, it was still going strong, too strong.

 

[Dualis]

My concern is under what conditions has the single-lane control been tested in? Where I live, we can have animals jumping out on the road. How would the system handle that? And would heavy rain affect how it reads the surroundings? Seems like a lot can go wrong.

 

[NissanDriver]

One thing I learned about Tesla is that they're always pulling data from customer cars which means every day they're building up more mileage and in that continuously building a smarter system. So come the end of a year duration of this data pulling they could have some system that's just about as best as it gets and remains so.

I can't only imagine other car makers doing the same thing.