Carlos Ghosn Flaunts New Technologies and Partnerships at CES
At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nissan chairman of the board and CEO Carlos Ghosn laid out the basics of the company’s plans for future mobility, autonomous driving and a strategy for zero fatalities on the road. His keynote concentrated on five major announcements.
A technology called Seamless Autonomous Mobility, part of what the manufacturer calls Nissan Intelligent Integration and based on NASA research, will combine artificial intelligence (AI) with human interaction to help autonomous vehicles make decisions in unpredictable situations, which will be recorded in the IA’s brains. The goal here is to speed up the process of mixing driverless cars and vehicles driven by humans in the same environment.
In Japan, Nissan will team up with internet company DeNA to test autonomous vehicles in commercial applications. The first phase of testing will begin this year in designated zones, and by 2020, Nissan expects the technology will be ready for deployment in the Tokyo metropolitan area.
A new Nissan LEAF will soon be unveiled, probably within the next year. The second-generation LEAF will incorporate ProPILOT technology, allowing the car to drive by itself on single-lane highways. Since 2010, Nissan says it had sold more than 250,000 LEAFs worldwide. In Canada, 1375 units of the LEAF were sold in 2016.
Nissan is pursuing its partnership with Microsoft to build the next generation of connected-car technologies. Microsoft’s personal assistant software, called Cortana, is expected to make driving “more efficient and seamless.”
Finally, the automaker announced a collaboration with the non-profit 100 Resilient Cities, or 100RC, which is pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation. Nissan is 100RC’s first automotive platform partner, and together, they will help cities get ready for autonomous driving, EVs and new mobility services.
