Powered by electricity and can drive by itself are two criteria
of future cars - at least before the flying cars can be realized. So far there
is a mass-production car that has met the above criteria, i.e. Tesla Model S.
But there is one important note to keep in mind: Tesla Model
S is not fully able to drive by itself. Indeed it's able to step on the gas
pedal and the brake, and keep the car on track, but the driver is still
required to make sure that the car is in safe circumstances, and puts his/her
hands near to the steering wheel.
The point is the automatic steering technology that's really
able to drive by itself still can't be applied now. But recently Nissan
showcases the Nissan Leaf Piloted Drive 1.0 Concept as a reference for the
automatic steering car that will be produced in 2020.
This means that Nissan has five years to enhance its
automatic steering system. Overall this concept car is actually very similar to
the Nissan Leaf electric car that has been launched to the market, the
difference is a myriad of sensors have been embedded so that the car can
recognize the existence of various objects in the vicinity.
Here Nissan relies on 12 cameras, 5 radars, 4 laser scanners
and a set of ultrasonic sensors. On paper, the number of sensors is much more
than the sensors of Tesla Model S now. It means that this car will be able to
understand the surrounding condition with more detailing, and at the end it
will be able to drive by itself better.
The steering test will be started in the near future in
Japan. In Japan, the regulations require the self-driving car to be equipped
with a kind of manual control mode, where the passenger inside could take over
the wheel whenever required.
2020 apparently will become an exciting year for automotive
enthusiasts, because at that time we will see at least two self-driving cars
that are ready to be produced: self-driving cars from Google and Nissan. And of
course we are still waiting for what can be done by Tesla during the next five
years.