Nissan Pro Pilot self-driving tech: driven by the autonomous car that’s ‘better than a human’ Nissan vows to make AI-based cars part of our everyday lives – from 2027. Its engineer reckons it’s a better driver then he is This blind right turn across three lanes of Tokyo traffic would be nerve-wracking for a human driver: our view forward is obscured by a bus swinging across our path. Will Nissan’s AI-trained autonomous Ariya sit tight, or make a bolt for it? Head of automated driving tech, Tetsuya Iijima sits in the electric SUV’s driving seat, not that his hands have gone anywhere near the steering for the first five minutes of this trip. Indeed he’s looking straight at me over his left shoulder, explaining his passion project, while I distractedly gaze past him at the huge, white, battering ram we’re engaging in a stand-off with. The bus swings right, clears our path and reveals that oncoming traffic is scarce. Cue an invisible poltergeist turning the steering wheel and releasing the brake, with the Ariya gliding across the junction, onto a side street and into the next scenario. This third-generation Pro Pilot system is a collaboration with British tech start-up Wayve: it produces the AI-driving model trained on millions of hours of dashcam footage (hopefully excluding those crazy Russian dashcam compilations), while Nissan focuses on systems integration and software to make the EV steer, brake and accelerate. How does the Ariya see on Ginza’s streets? There are 11 cameras dotted around the car, with one behind the windscreen mirror providing the image for the digital driver’s display, annotated by a blue arrow showing our path through the urban jungle. The black carbuncle lashed on the roof houses four of them, but critically the supporting LiDAR too. This reflected light sensor acts