Nissan debuts its new self-driving tech

Nissan is claiming it has beaten all of its fellow Japanese car-makers to the market with a new semi-autonomous driving assistant that it will offer on its new Serena people mover.

The self-driving system, called ProPILOT has been created, Nissan claims, to ease driver workload in heavy highway traffic and long commutes and has the ability, like other systems used by Tesla, Mercedes and Volvo, to steer, accelerate and brake automatically without any input from the driver.

Working at speeds from 30km/h to just 100km/h - other self-driving systems work at higher speeds than the Nissan’s - the system has not been confirmed for Australia yet.

The Japanese car-maker's ProPILOT also doesn't offer an overtake function - that comes later on in 2018, the car-maker has announced.

What ProPILOT will do is introduce semi-autonomous driving capability to the compact SUV segment as soon as next year when it’s introduced on the small Qashqai model.

It's not yet clear if we'll see ProPILOT-equipped Qashqais in Australia in 2017.

Nissan says a further update in 2020 will see ProPILOT offer the capability of autonomous driving in urban areas, with an added feature that will allow it to cope with intersections.

For those hoping Nissan Australia might import the fifth-generation Serena to Australia, prepare to be disappointed. Currently Nissan says there are no plans to sell its new practical eight-seater outside of Japan.

It remains to be seen whether Nissan's claim of offering more than 10 autonomous cars by 2020 will be met, but the ProPILOT tech is certainly moves the Japanese giant closer.