When it comes to the race for driverless cars, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance has always been ahead of the pack. To take its program one step further, the collaboration recently signed an agreement with Waymo, Google’s autonomous vehicle division. It joins a growing list of car companies working with Google to make this theoretical technology part of our everyday lives.
Renault and Nissan were some of the first companies to invest heavily in technology for self-driving cars. While these cars of the future might still be a long way off, you just have to look at Nissan’s new safety technology to understand how far the idea has come. Many of the brand’s Safety Shield Technologies, such as Lane Departure Prevention and the Intelligent Around View Monitor come from its autonomous car program, called Nissan Intelligent Mobility.
This partnership between Google’s Waymo and the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance seems like a loose tie. It commits both companies to work on autonomous cars in Japan and France, the Alliance companies’ home bases. According to the press release issued by Nissan, the two groups will assess opportunities for testing in each market and collaborate to understand and navigate regulations around self-driving cars.
It seems as if the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance and Google intend to work together towards making a self-driving car service as opposed to just an autonomous consumer car. The press release, issued yesterday, says that their collaboration is “related to driverless transportation-as-a-service offerings.” This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen car companies invest in car-sharing, but this seems to be one of more high-profile announcements in the area.
As with anything related to self-driving cars, we won’t hold our breath waiting for a vehicle that lets us read, eat, or play on our phones behind the wheel. This update in automotive technology is a huge step forward, which means that everything needs to be perfect before release. We’d rather wait for the best from Waymo, Renault, and Nissan.
Press Release: Nissan
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