Japan's Nissan tests driverless vehicles in city streets filled with
cars and people
[March 10, 2025] By
YURI KAGEYAMA
YOKOHAMA, Japan (AP) — The van makes its way slowly but surely through
the city streets, braking gently when a car swerves into its lane. But
its steering wheel is turning on its own, and there's no one in the
driver’s seat.
The driverless technology from Nissan Motor Corp., which uses 14
cameras, nine radars and six LiDar sensors installed in and around the
vehicle, highlights Japan's eagerness to catch up with players like
Google’s Waymo that have taken the lead in the U.S.
Japan, home to the world’s top automakers, has not kept pace with the
global shift to autonomous driving, so far led by China and the U.S. But
momentum is building.
Waymo is going to land in Japan this year. Details haven't been
disclosed, but it has a partnership with major cab company Nihon Kotsu,
which will oversee and manage their all-electric Jaguar I-PACE
sport-utility vehicles, first in the Tokyo area, still with a human cab
driver riding along.
During Nissan's demonstration, the streets were bustling with other cars
and pedestrians. The vehicle stayed within the maximum speed limit in
the area of 40 kph (25 mph), its destination set with a smartphone app.
Takeshi Kimura, the Mobility and AI Laboratory engineer at Nissan,
insists an automaker is more adept at integrating self-driving
technology with the overall workings of a car — simply because it knows
cars better.
“How the sensors must be adapted to the car’s movements, or to monitor
sensors and computers to ensure reliability and safety requires an
understanding of the auto system overall,” he said during a recent
demonstration that took reporters on a brief ride.
Nissan’s technology, being tested on its Serena minivan, is still
technically at the industry's Level Two because a person sits before a
remote-control panel in a separate location outside the vehicle, in this
case, at the automaker's headquarters, and is ready to step in if the
technology fails.
Nissan also has a human sitting in the front passenger seat during the
test rides, who can take over the driving, if needed. Unless there is a
problem, the people in the remote control room and the passenger seat
are doing nothing.
Nissan plans to have 20 such vehicles moving in the Yokohama area in the
next couple of years, with the plan to reach Level Four, which means no
human involvement even as backup, by 2029 or 2030.
Autonomous vehicles can serve a real need given the nation’s shrinking
population, including a shortage of drivers.
Other companies are working on the technology in Japan, including
startups like Tier IV, which is pushing an open source collaboration on
autonomous driving technology.
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In this photo released by Nissan Motor Corp., its driverless
vehicle, center, drives along a street in Yokohama, near Tokyo in
February 2025. (Nissan Motor Corp. via AP)
 So far, Japan has approved the use
of so-called Level Four autonomous vehicles in a rural area in Fukui
Prefecture, but those look more like golf carts. A Level Four bus is
scuttling around a limited area near Tokyo’s Haneda airport. But its
maximum speed is 12 kmph (7.5 mph). Nissan's autonomous vehicle is a
real car, capable of all its mechanical workings and speed levels.
Toyota Motor Corp. recently showed its very own
“city” or living area for its workers and partnering startups, near
Mount Fuji, being built especially to test various technology,
including autonomous driving.
Progress has been cautious.
University of Tokyo Professor Takeo Igarashi, who specializes in
computer and information technology, believes challenges remain
because it’s human nature to be more alarmed by accidents with
driverless vehicles than regular crashes.
“In human driving, the driver takes responsibility. It’s so clear.
But nobody is driving so you don’t know who will take
responsibility,” Igarashi told The Associated Press.
“In Japan, the expectation for commercial services is very high. The
customer expects perfect quality for any service — restaurants or
drivers or anything. This kind of auto-driving is a service form a
company, and everybody expects high quality and perfection. Even a
small mistake is not acceptable.”
Nissan says its technology is safe. After all, a human can’t be
looking at the front, the back and all around at the same time. But
the driverless car can, with all its sensors.
When a system failure happened during the recent demonstration, the
car just came to a stop and all was well.
Phil Koopman, professor of electrical and computer engineering at
Carnegie Mellon University, believes the autonomous vehicle industry
is just getting started.
The main problem is what’s known as “edge cases,” those rare but
dangerous situations that the machine has not yet been taught to
respond to. Using autonomous fleets of a significant size for some
time is needed for such edge cases to be learned, he said.
“We will see each city require special engineering efforts and the
creation of a special remote support center. This will be a
city-by-city deployment for many years,” said Koopman.
“There is no magic switch.”
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