Yes, Nissan and NASA are working together in a “stellar” collaboration referred to simply as NissanNASA. This could be the best all-star team ever put together. Maybe even be better than the Bird, Jordan, and Pippen “Dream Team” of the 1992 Olympic games.
So what are Nissan and NASA doing exactly? Are they going to design a flying spaceship car, like many of us nerds have been hoped for – for forever? According to Sheridan Nissan, the answer is that they are planning to work on a self-driving, autonomous car, and have coined it the “ROBOT-Z”.
And what will NASA be able to take away from this? The space agency aims to benefit from Nissan’s own expertise to help bolster it’s space programs. It will also be leveraging Nissan’s R&D for other prototype systems as well as robotics. Given the limited funding that NASA has these days, this is a brilliant move. If you are going to build something as revolutionary as an autonomous car, what could be more helpful than the help of real rocket scientists.
NissanNASA (gotta get used to this pairing), has noted they hope to have an autonomous car ready for the consumer market as soon as 2020. Considering that Google is already working on this technology, this should be one really interesting “space race” to watch.
Earthgarage – Greener Car. Fatter Wallet.