Yokohama, Japan – The van is making its way slowly but surely in the streets of the city, slowly braking when a car is swerved on its way. But its steering wheel turns alone, and there is no one in the driver’s seat.
Nissan Motor Corp.’s driverless technology, which uses 14 cameras, nine radars and six Lidar sensors installed in and around the vehicle, highlights Japan’s eagerness to catch up with players like Waymo from Google who took the lead in the United States
Japan, which houses the best car manufacturers in the world, has not followed the pace of the global passage to autonomous driving, so far led by China and the United States, but the momentum is being built.
Waymo will land in Japan this year. The details have not been disclosed, but it has a partnership with the large taxi company Nihon Kotsu, which will supervise and manage its electric vehicles Jaguar I-Pace Sport-Utility, first in the Tokyo region, still with a human taxi driver.
During the Nissan demonstration, the streets collapsed with other cars and pedestrians. The vehicle remained within the maximum speed limit in the 40 km / h area (25 MPH), its destination defined with a smartphone application.
Takeshi Kimura, the mobility and AI laboratory engineer at Nissan, insists that an automotive manufacturer is more able to integrate autonomous technology into the overall operation of a car – simply because it knows the cars better.
“How the sensors must be adapted to the movements of the car, or to monitor sensors and computers to guarantee reliability and security require an understanding of the automotive system overall,” he said in a recent demonstration that took journalists during a brief journey.
Takeshi Kimura, an engineer from Nissan supervising the autonomous technology of the Japanese car manufacturer, shows the car filled with technology to journalists from the headquarters of Nissan in Yokohama, near Tokyo, on March 6, 2025. Credit: AP / Yuri Kageyama
Nissan’s technology, tested on its mini-dinner in Serena, is always technically at level of industry because a person sits in front of a remote control panel in a separate location outside the vehicle, in this case, at the car manufacturer’s headquarters, and is ready to intervene in the event of technology failure.
Nissan also has a human seated in the passenger’s seat before the rides, which can resume driving, if necessary. Unless there is a problem, people in the remote control room and the passenger seat do nothing.
Nissan provides that 20 vehicles of this type move in the Yokohama region over the next two years, with the plan to reach the level four, which means no human involvement even as a backup, by 2029 or 2030.
Autonomous vehicles can meet a real need given the country’s narrowing population, including a shortage of drivers.
Takeshi Kimura, an engineer from Nissan supervising the autonomous technology of the Japanese car manufacturer, shows the car filled with technology to journalists from the headquarters of Nissan in Yokohama, near Tokyo, on March 6, 2025. Credit: AP / Yuri Kageyama
Other companies work on technology in Japan, including startups such as level IV, which pushes open source collaboration on autonomous driving technology.
So far, Japan has approved the use of so-called level four independent vehicles in a rural area of the Fukui prefecture, but they are more like golf carts. A level four bus rushes around a limited area near Haneda airport in Tokyo. But its maximum speed is 12 km / h (7.5 MPH). Nissan’s autonomous vehicle is a real car, capable of all its mechanical functionality and speed levels.
Toyota Motor Corp. Recently showed its own “city” or its living space for its workers and startups in partnership, near Mont Fuji, under construction in particular to test various technologies, including autonomous driving.
Progress has been cautious.
Professor Takeo Igarashi from the University of Tokyo, which specializes in computer technologies and information, believes that challenges remain because it is human nature to be more alarmed by accidents with driver’s vehicles than regular accidents.
“In human conduct, the driver assumes responsibility. It’s so clear. But no one drives, so you don’t know who will take responsibility, ”Igarashi told the Associated Press.
“In Japan, the expectation of commercial services is very high. The customer expects perfect quality for any service – restaurants or drivers or anything. This type of automatic driving is a form of service, and everyone expects high quality and perfection. Even a small error is not acceptable. »»
Nissan says his technology is sure. After all, a human cannot look at the front, back and all around at the same time. But the driverless car can, with all its sensors.
When a system failure occurred during the recent demonstration, the car stopped and everything was fine.
Phil Koopman, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, believes that the autonomous vehicle industry has only just begun.
The main problem is called “on -board cases”, these rare but dangerous situations to which the machine has not yet learned to answer. The use of autonomous fleets of significant size for a certain time is necessary for such on-board cases to be learned, he said.
“We will see each city require special engineering efforts and the creation of a special distance assistance center. It will be a deployment of the city by city for many years, “said Koopman.
“There is no magic switch.”