Nissan, NASA Partner for Self-Driving Vehicles
Pickup-truck and car manufacturer Nissan Motor Co. is partnering with NASA to develop and deploy self-driving vehicles by the end of this year, Nissan announced.
The move is Nissan’s latest foray into partnerships on its vehicles; last year, the company announced a deal with engine-maker Cummins for availability of that manufacturer’s 5.0-liter diesel engines in Nissan Titan pickups. The redesigned version of that truck is slated to be unveiled at the North American International Auto Show this month.
The five-year deal with NASA will bring together staff from Nissan’s Silicon Valley Research Center and NASA’s Ames Research Center in California. Researchers will test a fleet of zero-emission autonomous vehicles at Ames to demonstrate proof-of-concept remote operation of autonomous vehicles for the transport of materials, goods, payloads and people, Nissan said. The first vehicles are slated to begin testing by the end of 2015. The tests will parallel the methods NASA uses to operate planetary rovers from a mission control center.
Nissan has set 2020 as the timeframe for the introduction of autonomous drive vehicles.
“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,” Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn said.
“All of our potential topics of research collaboration with Nissan are areas in which Ames has strongly contributed to major NASA programs,” said S. Pete Worden, director of the Ames facility. “We look forward to applying knowledge developed during this partnership toward future space and aeronautics endeavors.”
