Nissan to test autonomous cars on rural and residential roads

Nissan is taking part it a new research project that will see a fleet of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) undergo trials on rural and residential roads in the UK.

The evolvAD project will put the vehicles through their paces on a variety of complex routes.

Robert Bateman, evolvAD project manager and manager of Nissan’s Research and Advanced Engineering team, Nissan Technical Centre Europe (NTCE), said: “In our previous research projects, our AD team and partners have tackled highways and complex city environments. Now we move onto our next challenge – built up residential streets and rural roads.

“To bring autonomous driving to market, we must test and trial the technology on as many different road types as possible and that’s why projects like evolvAD are so important.  Ultimately, we want to make driving cleaner, safer and more inclusive for everyone and we look forward to working with our consortium partners to deliver that.”

Utilising infrastructure such as CCTV in residential areas, the evolvAD CAVs will be able to receive information to improve situational awareness, creating a test study on how vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) technologies can be used to enhance the performance of CAVs. The project will also look to develop new V2I technologies to further support the deployment of autonomous drive vehicles

Rural and residential roads present their own unique set of challenges for autonomous driving technology. For example, in residential areas, drivers often face narrows roads, single lanes with parked vehicles on either side and slow driving speeds. Rural roads can include similar conditions but with higher driving speeds and winding roads with little to no road markings.  

Delivered by a consortium of five industry partners including Nissan as technical lead, the research project is jointly funded by government and the consortium partners, the government's £100m Intelligent Mobility fund is administered by the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) and delivered by the UK's innovation agency, Innovate UK.

The 21-month project is already underway in the development phase, using Nissan Leafs as the test vehicles. The vehicles will be tested in simulation and on private test tracks before the evolvAD CAVs are put through their paces on live roads in the coming months.

David Moss, senior vice president, Region Research & Development for Nissan AMIEO (Africa, Middle East, India, Europe, and Oceania) said: “We are extremely proud to be a part of the evolvAD project in the UK, working alongside some brilliant partners to test and trial our technology further.

“Through Nissan Ambition 2030 we want to empower mobility for everyone, and autonomous drive technologies are critical to this effort as they offer huge benefits in terms of vehicle safety, environmental impact and accessibility. As we celebrate 35 years of NTCE in the UK, we’re excited to get going with this next project that will help ensure we continue to deliver technology of the future that truly benefits our customers.”

The evolvAD project partners are: Nissan, Connected Places Catapult, Humanising Autonomy, SBD Automotive and TRL.