HANDS FREE ( ALMOST ) !
I WAS honoured to have ‘warmed up’ the converted all-electric zeroemissions E-Type Jaguar (below) Prince Harry used to drive his bride, Meghan, to the evening reception after their Windsor Castle wedding.
I’ve also just been driving Jaguar’s new all-electric I-Pace, too. Can’t say what it’s like yet. But the clue’s in the power source . . .
Nissan’s new British-built Qashqai family sUV — complete with semiautonomous driving technology — has just taken me for a drive. i spun the affordable ‘self-driving’ car for 30 miles around the M25 and M4, plus a stint on private land. it was an intriguing ride. nissan has fitted technology to the school-run favourite that, until now, had been the preserve of expensive luxury vehicles such as top-of the-range BMWs and Mercedes-Benz models.
On sale from just over £31,000 when equipped with the new ProPilot system, the Qashqai can steer itself, and accelerate and brake automatically, using data supplied by a camera mounted on its windscreen to read the road markings, and a radar behind the badge on the front grille to track other vehicles.
The system kicks in at 40mph and works in the dark.
However, until the law over selfdriving cars is clarified, nissan insists drivers must keep their hands on the steering wheel at all times, however lightly, to comply with current legislation.
Drivers who take their hands off the wheel for ten seconds or more are given a series of visible and audible warnings to grip the wheel again.
if ignored, the car applies the brakes itself to bring it to a halt in 30 seconds.
so what’s it like to drive, or be driven? Pretty simple and intuitive — if slightly strange.
The car itself did all the work. although my hands were lightly on the steering wheel, they were superfluous. The car was doing the steering.
a blue button on the steering activates the system, and when you reach the required speed you press ‘set’ and the car does the rest. a green driving wheel indicates the system is live, while three green bars show the safety distance is set.
a particularly clever touch: when i indicated right to overtake a slower-moving vehicle in the inside lane, the car boosted the revs in anticipation of my manoeuvre to give me plenty of extra oomph to pass. FANCY having a testdrive car delivered to your door at a time to suit?
In a UK first, Volvo has teamed up with online giant Amazon to do just that.
You can book a Prime Now test-drive by smartphone. The Volvo V40 hatchback (from £21,410) will be brought over for a 45minute run with a trained expert. The offer is available in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Edinburgh, in June and July.
Details at amazon.co.uk/ volvo and volvocars.co.uk.