Nissan is driving intelligent mobility
ELECTRIC vehicles are not just the answer to the world’s mobility problems, they could be the solution to the globe’s management and storage of renewable energy too.
Speaking to newspaper editors recently, Nissan corporate vice-president and global head of communications, marketing and brand, Roel de Vries, said the company was forging ahead with its development of electric vehicles (EVS) as part of its intelligent mobility strategy.
“We are no longer a car manufacturing company. Over the last decade we have become a mobility company,” he said.
Nissan’s three-pronged approach under the over-arching principle of intelligent mobility – intelligent driving, intelligent power and intelligent integration – creates a raft of technologies that can ultimately lead to autonomous driving, but is in fact designed to create a world where cars have minimal impact on the environment, with zero emissions and zero fatalities.
“Our goal is to make driving safer and more enjoyable for the driver by using technologies that help the driver become more confident. We do not believe that the future is only autonomous driving… there is a place for it in specific designated environments, but we fundamentally believe that people enjoy driving too much and owning their vehicles too.”
De Vries has no doubt though that electric vehicles are the future.
“Range anxiety is about to become a thing of the past. We already have cars in the market with ranges of 200km between charges, and very soon this will become 600km.”
The company, he said, had also pioneered e-power, a technology incorporating an internal combustion engine to keep the batteries full, removing the need for recharging, unlike the technology in hybrid vehicles where drivers can use either electric or fossil fuel engines.
The industry would soon reach an inflection point which would speed up the transition to EV, but to do this it needed the buy-in from governments, and especially municipal governments, De Vries said.
“We need regulations to be drawn up for new green buildings to have mandatory charging points in their basements. We need to see a change in the approach of governments by setting targets for zero-emission vehicles because the motoring manufacturers cannot do it on their own.”
Nissan Group of Africa chief executive officer Mike Whitfield agreed, saying the time had come for all motor manufacturers in the country to sit down with the government and seriously engage them on the subject.
“We need a total 360-degree plan, a co-ordinated one, that will start stimulating interest in the entire EV sector. There are so many factors to it, from driver safety to renewable energy.
“Here at Nissan SA we are looking at pilot projects to use some of the batteries from our Nissan Leaf vehicles to power schools and clinics.”
Renewable energy, said De Vries, was one of the unintended benefits of the company’s push to explore the frontiers of intelligent mobility.
“We have the capacity to use the power that our cars create to power homes. We are doing this in Japan already.
“In about 10 years you will see a situation where drivers will be able to sell their excess power to utility companies to feed into the grid.
“One of the biggest problems with renewable energy, unlike coal and gas, is to manage capacity and store it until it is needed. The batteries that we use and the batteries that are being developed have a lifespan way beyond the cars they are being placed in, way beyond 10 years.”
Nissan’s new generation Leaf EV is proof of all the advances that had been made: far better range; the ability to provide power to other devices, like homes; and the latest advances in intelligent driving, from intelligent cruise control to Pro-pilot, the onboard hands-on self-steering highway lane-management system.
Already, Whitfield said, there were technologies being tested that would allow for hands-off multi-lane management, while joint ventures with Nasa and the company’s patented Brain-to-vehicle system worked individually to make driving much safer than ever before, which cumulatively would pave the way for autonomous driving solutions.
Intelligent integration connecting the vehicle to the internet of things was the next frontier, which would be aided and abetted by the advent of 5G internet capability.
“The next big thing is the car,” said De Vries. “When I was growing up it was all about the car, and then it became all about computers and the smartphone. We are now moving towards a car that can do everything a smartphone can do and more, including talking to other cars.”