Nissan, in conjunction with partner Renault, has expanded its presence in Silicon Valley with the opening of a new research centre specializing in autonomous driving and connected cars.

Yesterday marked the official opening of the Nissan Research Center Silicon Valley (NRC-SV), which will enhance Nissan’s global research capability through collaborative partnerships with companies and research institutions in this global technology hub.

The opening of NRC-SV is part of Nissan’s global strategy to expand and localize its R&D function in strategic markets. The new Silicon Valley research centre will take responsibility for selected roles in collaboration with Nissan Research Center in Japan.

“This is where everything is happening. This is where all the intelligence lies, so this is where Nissan needs to be,” said Nissan Americas Senior Vice President of Research and Development Carla Bailo.

The initial projects that Nissan researchers are pursuing include:

• Research of autonomous vehicles to realize a future with safe, stress-free mobility;
• Research of connected vehicles that can tap into infrastructure and the Internet to maximize energy and time efficiency; and
• Research in the area of Human Machine Interface to enhance the experience of autonomous and connected vehicles.

In addition, planning and advanced development of connected vehicle services and the design of user interface systems will also be studied as a complementary field to the above disciplines.

Nissan Executive Vice President supervising Research and Development Mitsuhiko Yamashita said Monday during a visit to the new R&D centre, “As we continue to expand our R&D capabilities throughout the world, we aggressively pursue our activities to create new values of mobility, by harnessing the latest information and communication technologies here in our new research center in Silicon Valley.”

Source: Nissan

Tags: autonomous driving, car design, Carla Bailo, connected cars, engineering, HMI, Human Machine Interface, internet, Mitsuhiko Yamashita, Mountain View, Nissan Research Center Silicon Valley, NRC-SV, R&D, Silicon Valley, Takao Asami