Nissan Wants To Beat Google And Produce The First Ever Driverless Car

Earlier this year, BMW predicted cars would be highly automated by 2020 and driverless by 2025. Pretty cool, but perhaps a touch conservative. Nissan recently upped the bar.

At the firm’s 2013 Nissan 360 event, Executive Vice President, Andy Palmer, said Nissan will bring “multiple affordable, energy efficient, fully autonomous-driving vehicles to the market by 2020.”

The firm has been working on self-driving tech for years with universities including MIT, Stanford, Cal Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Oxford, and the University of Tokyo (among others), and during Nissan 360 they showed off their autonomous LEAF prototype.

The car monitors the surrounding environment using sensors, including cameras and laser, and artificial intelligence to autonomously navigate the road. The tech is an extension of Nissan’s Safety Shield system, which can warn drivers of dangerous situations and even take action when necessary.

To further develop self-driving tech for commercial deployment, the firm is building a test facility in Japan to be completed in early 2014. In brick-and-mortar townscapes, they’ll test their robot cars in extreme situations too hazardous for public highways.

This is not to detract from Google, who has truly pioneered driverless automotive – not to mention brought it into the limelight in a positive manner – but their chances of turning that tech into marketable reality are far slimmer than those of Nissan, Audi, or other automakers who are already working on the idea and nearing fruition.

Will Nissan be the first? It sure looks that way. Whoever actually has the first self-driving car, though, the ability for vehicles to pilot themselves reliably, cheaply, and safely will fundamentally change transportation forever.