Nissan IDS Concept Shows Electric and Autonomous Future [Tokyo]

Last night at the Tokyo Motor Show, Nissan revealed just what the company believes the current electric vehicle and autonomous driving trends are heading toward with the Nissan IDS Concept.

Nissan’s IDS Concept at the 2015 Tokyo Motor Show.

In August 2013, Ghosn said that by 2020 Nissan plans to equip innovative autonomous drive technology on multiple vehicles and Nissan claims progress is well on track to achieve this goal.

The other point of Nissan’s focus with the IDS is its evolving autonomous driving systems, developed under the “Intelligent Driving” banner. The concept teased by the automaker is a vehicle which apparently previews the next-generation version of the electric Nissan Leaf.

Nissan said it expects to have cars with Intelligent Driving technology on the roads around the world by the 2020s.

Nissan’s vision for cars of the future goes hand-in-hand with the company’s recently-announced ‘fuel station of the future’ concept, which it is developing alongside architects Foster + Partners.

One of the objectives here also is to surpass the petrol-powered cars. Relevant? You bet. With cars looking to become fully autonomous sometime in the future, people will certainly need to be entertained in different ways while letting the vehicle do all the driving.

It’s not another Leaf, but Nissan’s treating its IDS concept vehicle as an equally huge a step for automobiles. The combination of aerodynamics, lightness and a new, high-capacity 60kWh battery will allow the IDS Concept to “drive long distances”, according to Nissan.

The automaker has come up with an intriguing solution for communication, placing an outward-facing display in the dashboard.

An LED light on the side body line, for example, lights up white when walkers or bicyclists are nearby, signaling that the auto knows they’re there.

To this end, the IDS has two driving modes.

Alternatively when the driver selects Manual Drive, the interior transforms to put the driver in control. and all seats face forward.

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That last word will be a welcome message for drivers who feel uncomfortable about self-driving cars from the likes of Google, which remove all driver controls entirely. When it is on automatic drive mode, the steering wheel will recede so the driver can relax.