How Nissan cars are driving themselves (and us) on UK roads
We get under the skin of Nissan’s self-driving car programme and take a ride in an autonomous Nissan Leaf on UK roads
It’s tough to know if autonomous driving is coming or going sometimes. The idea of cars driving themselves has been around for decades and plenty of brands have set ambitious dates for launching ‘driverless vehicles’. Many of these haven’t seen the light of day due to costs, technological barriers, customer demand or, in many cases, governmental red tape.
There are some regions around the world that already have this tech roaming the roads, but thanks in part to tight regulations, it’s yet to roll out to the general public here in the UK. However, as we’ve recently experienced courtesy of Nissan’s European Technical Centre in Cranfield, Beds, that doesn’t mean fully autonomous cars aren’t already on our streets in some capacity.
Nissan has recently completed its latest stage of autonomous driving research, called ‘evolvAD’. It brings to an end an intensive eight-year testing period, which not only saw more than 16,000 miles of self-driving on British roads, but also the record for the furthest autonomous journey (230 miles from Milton Keynes to Sunderland) and, reassuringly for us considering we’re about to experience this tech first-hand, zero accidents.
Nissan started this project in 2017 under the ‘HumanDrive’ stage, which saw autonomous cars (based on the first-generation Leaf) take to Britain’s motorways, a relatively easy environment for autonomy to work in. Next up was ‘ServCity’ from 2020 to 2023 in Woolwich, London, to give Nissan real-world data on autonomous urban driving. Linking these two motoring scenarios was ‘evolvAD’, which ran from 2023 to early 2025, focusing on arterial roads heading to rural areas.
David Moss, senior vice president of research and development for Nissan, said of evolvAD’s progress and its goal: “It has been a privilege working with our dedicated partners to advance AD mobility. As well as making driving safer by reducing human error, and cleaner by improving efficiency, this technology can give many more people access to mobility who may not have it today due to location, age or disability.”
Nissan has made a clear commitment to autonomous driving, with around £20m spent so far on this project. The firm has also been researching and developing the tech in its US ‘Advanced Technology Centre’ in Silicon Valley, and in Japan, where it will soon launch an autonomous mobility service in Yokohama.
If it works in the UK, it’ll work anywhere
While Japan and the US present certain challenges for autonomous tech, at Nissan’s European Technical Centre, Matthew Ewing, vice president of the firm’s vehicle engineering, told us that “if we can get autonomous driving right in the UK, it’ll work pretty much anywhere”.
That’s not just in reference to the UK’s unpredictable and substandard road network, but the government’s stance on autonomous vehicles. It has sent mixed signals of late, with officials highlighting worries in 2024 over unknown ‘safety risks’ – limiting autonomous capabilities to highway manoeuvres. At the same time, it has created a £100m Intelligent Mobility fund and is providing almost half of the money needed for Nissan’s evolvAD project.
Sarah Jones MP, minister for industry, has championed the technology. She also recently spoke on Nissan’s evolvAD too, saying: “The UK is home to a world-class automotive sector, and I’m pleased this project has brought autonomous vehicles one step closer to reality. Our industrial strategy will strengthen this, bringing growth, jobs and opportunities to every part of the UK.”
Asked what he thought the main challenges facing autonomous driving were, Matthew Ewing replied: “I think the more unusual road scenarios – the unknown unknowns. For example, when we were testing, there was a big lorry that had unlocked back doors and they flung open – sometimes you cannot account for these things.”
On the road in a self-driving Leaf
Yet great leaps in automotive technology have often been taken into the unknown and now it’s time for our comparatively tiny step into Nissan’s autonomous Mk2 Leaf, kitted out with its evolvAD equipment, to first send us on a figure-of-eight loop around the technical centre. The journey covers a few miles, with a mix of speed limits, hazards and twisty B-roads to show just how far Nissan’s project has come.
Sitting in the front passenger seat, we first notice an additional screen in the middle of the dash with a simplified augmented-reality display. This shows speed and graphics of upcoming vehicles, pedestrians and traffic signs with blue and red ‘halos’ around the car to signal changes in behaviour. Nissan says this could make it into production and from our experience we’d imagine many customers would like this added layer of visibility into what the car is seeing. The next thing is the ‘driver’, who has his or her hands a couple of inches away from the steering wheel and is ready to intervene at any moment (ours does this once to avoid an expanding pothole).
We then set off and leave the technical centre with the car behaving as if a human is driving. But that’s no surprise, thanks to ‘HumanDrive’. This is the name given to the part of the project designed with Nissan’s Humanising Autonomy partner to create a driving experience befitting an ‘advanced driver’, with braking, steering input and acceleration all done as smoothly as possible.
Negotiating speed bumps, roundabouts and even automatically giving way to a large van (despite having right of way) to quicken traffic flow were all completed perfectly. With the help of impressive HD-mapping from aerial imagery, the car even tackles tight roads without any markings. On B-roads with national speed limits, we even found ourselves held up by other drivers – such is the confidence and road-holding of Nissan’s autonomous technology.
The drive showcased what we already knew in many instances: that the technology is here already. The Leaf’s boot and interior were packed full of computers and the roof was loaded with cameras, radars and sensors, but Ewing said: “The cameras and lidars we have on the car, they’re for research and development. To try and drive the costs down now – that’s what we’ll try and do. And the size, we need to get that down to one camera and one radar.”
Testing and infrastructure
As part of evolvAD’s testing in London, the programme used infrastructure such as CCTV on residential streets to improve situational awareness and access the information that could be provided by the car’s sensors and cameras. Despite CCTV cameras covering a huge swathe of the UK’s road network, this is obviously only applicable to certain areas, with Ewing telling us that Nissan “doesn’t want to infrastructure the world”, preferring instead to use what is already available.
The next step of autonomy, according to Nissan, is a mobility service. As mentioned, this idea will come to fruition in Japan this year, although 2028 is the target for launching in the UK. The mobility service Nissan is planning will be based on true driverless vehicles, potentially offering an alternative to taxis and buses for those that can’t drive or use public transport.
The cars will most likely be EVs, although Nissan hasn’t ruled out internal-combustion-engined cars making use of autonomous tech; the Serena used in Japan for mobility uses a petrol engine. “The mobility vehicles, when we launch this, will be bespoke,” said Ewing. “As we get into mainstream production cars for customers, they will start to be integrated.” For those cars, Ewing said the technology could even be sold as an ‘option pack’, the same as Nissan’s current Pro Pilot driver-assist system.
While Ewing and Nissan don’t see any fundamental barriers to rolling out autonomous technology, he does understand the public apprehension over driverless cars. “I think the safety features we currently have are becoming normal and people generally appreciate them,” Ewing said. “Going forward with the next step you have to get people to trust the technology.”
As for the keen drivers out there who are concerned that Nissan is looking to remove their favourite pastime, Ewing relayed one key parameter of the project: “We don’t want to take away the fun out of driving, we want to take the stress out of driving.”
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