Top 10 things you should know about the cars of the future

Last week, Nissan hosted its first Nissan Futures automotive forum to advance the adoption of electrified vehicles and update key stakeholders on its progress towards autonomous driving.

Far from pie-in-the-sky ideas, some of this technology is here now, with many innovations coming in the near future and some further away that you might think. Here are the 10 most intyeresting things we learned.

Research shows safety is one of the key concerns for electric car buyers but did you know water and electricity can mix? The Nissan LEAF is practically an amphibious vehicle with a water fording depth of 700mm. Just add snorkel!

Thanks to vehicle-to-home (V2H) technology, your car can communicate with your electricity system to best manage its charging. When plugged in to charge, the LEAF will optimise its charging time to reduce draw on the grid, and charge at more affordable times of the day.

If you're running on solar panels, the LEAF will charge during the day and then can switch to using the stored charge in its battery to supply your home's power needs overnight.

In the future, commercial buildings will summon electric vehicles with available battery capacity to deliver small amounts of charge to the building's own batteries.

This will reduce the load on the grid and enable building managers to source power from an open network at a cheaper rate. Owners will receive payment via blockchain technology for any power sold.

While the LEAF is a battery electric vehicle, Nissan is also developing its e-power hybrid system for future vehicles. Acting as a series hybrid, e-Power vehicles combine a battery and electric motor with a small engine that acts as a generator.

Unlike a parallel hybrid that uses the engine to directly drive the vehicle, the e-Power engine only serves to put charge into the battery, so an e-Power vehicle is 100 per cent driven by the electric motor. Currently available on two overseas cars, expect to see more hybrid versions of models across the Nissan range.

If you consider yourself 'a real driver' then you may be concerned about handing over control to the machines, but the reality is autonomous driving vehicles will save lives.

More than 93 per cent of vehicle accidents are caused by human error, but autonomous driving smarts will help correct a driver's inattention or intervenes if a driver misjudges a manoeuvre and it's claimed they could reduce accidents by up to 90 per cent.

While the technology already exists to allow a car to drive itself, the reality is that the entire road network will need overhauling before you'll be summoning a self-driving taxi.

All self-driving vehicles will be reliant on excellent satellite/data connections, highly developed AI and sophisticated standards for infrastructure like traffic lights and communication with other vehicles.

We'll also need reworked legislation as current laws are based on human drivers. All of this development will take years to refine.

Level 5 fully autonomous vehicles (ones with no pedals and no steering wheel) are likely to be confined to dedicated small networks within cities. At least for the next few decades.

Developed to address specific local and commercial needs, a cluster of vehicles will work together within a network to perform particular functions.

A busy metropolis like Tokyo with excellent existing public transport networks may need a network of self-driving taxis for short urban drives, while a city like Melbourne, where there's no train to the airport, may instigate self-driving lanes for airport shuttles.

Pundits expect that with passengers using these ride hailing services for day-to-day city use, there will still be a need for recreational vehicles for weekend manoeuvres and country dwellers. Drivers rejoice!

Nissan has been working on brain to vehicle technology as the next evolution in its human machine interface (HMI). Showcased at this year's CES, the system aims to read a driver's brainwaves and convert them into actions nanoseconds before the driver's own reaction times.

As an extension of this technology, Nissan Senior Vice President of Global Design, Alfonso Albaisa, says its brain-to-vehicle communication system could even make you a better driver on the track.

Speaking at Nissan Futures he said "…imagine a world where you are driving a GT-R on a racetrack and it's the first time and naturally you have apprehension or something about the turns or about the speed, but you have the confidence that this car actually knows what's happening."

In this event, the car could judge track conditions and the driver's thoughts to manage its own speed and steering, taking a better racing line than the driver might dare to choose. Now everyone can be Knight Rider.

Autonomous, electric vehicles will be real multi-taskers. They will operate as part of an intelligent network, serving as personal transportation during the rush hour, grocery delivery vehicles during the day, pizza delivery vehicles in the evening and couriers overnight.

If you live in the city, you'll be less likely to own your own vehicle, but you'll have the flexibility to have the world brought to your door.

As electric vehicles require less interior volume to be given over to combustion engines and conventional controls, and autonomous vehicles won't even need things like a steering wheel or pedals, designers are rethinking vehicle layouts.

That can be more flexible, with no need for 2+2 seating. Front seats can be rotated, allowing for meetings on the run. Floor pans won't be confined to specific lengths, with vehicles being conceptualised in a number of dimensions, depending on usage.

Experts predict that we'll spend 50 per cent less on our vehicles and running costs, that mobility options will improve for the elderly (25 per cent of the population will be over 60 by 2020), that traffic efficiency will improve with a 30 per cent reduction in the amount of time you spend sitting in traffic and that emissions will decrease by 65 per cent.

Nissan is working with NASA on Seamless Autonomous Mobility (SAM) to manage fleets of autonomous vehicles. SAM uses technology developed by NASA for managing interplanetary rovers as they traverse unpredictable landscapes.

The same AI principles are being applied in Nissan vehicles to manage unpredictable urban environments with the aim of carrying out trials on public roads in the near future.

NASA says the partnership is a perfect example of how the work required to advance space exploration can also pioneer advances on Earth.