Nissan is easily one of the most innovative companies of recent times as the brand continues to push automotive industry forward.
They have officially unveiled their new ideas including a range extender and autonomous driving capabilities for their cars.
CEO of the company, Carlo Ghosn strongly believes that the reason that hurdles people from adopting electric vehicles is the limited range. No one is interested in a car which would travel 30 miles or so before it needs a recharge. Besides, if it is going to be largely reliant on petrol as its primary fuel source to cover distance, it voids the purpose. Addressing these issues, Ghosn said that the new range extender will finally give buyers the reason to go for an electric vehicle and adopt the new technology.
It is a hybrid system designed by Nissan which has been named as the e-power. The system has an engine integrated in it which is capable of recharging the battery available in the car and allow passengers to cover longer distances without hassles. The concept is simple and it is expected to work seamlessly when a production version of the e-power gets launched. It keeps generating power so that cars can go as long as they want before a power supply is available. Nissan’s CEO confirmed that they are going to launch the system with a new compact set to be announced later.
2016 Nissan Leaf
The other technology, an autonomous driving system named ProPilot was also debuted by Nissan. There’s isn’t a dearth for self-driving cars in the industry. Almost every company has one or the other model which can handle autonomous movement to a certain extent. Nissan promoted the new technology as a single lane design which also supports self-steering. It allows the car to automatically steer to change lanes in highways while it can handle driving in stop and go traffic single lane setup.
The automobile manufacturer will debut the technology first in Japan before rolling it out to cars in other regions. The e-power will be available only in the Japanese market for now while the autonomous driving technology will be introduced in Europe, US, China and other parts of the world. The Range Extender seems like a decent idea for now but when cars like Tesla Model 3 gets launched, it might be a tough sell for Nissan. They may have to expand the battery capacity of their EVs to compete with others.