Cloud computing powers Nissan Leaf and will be key for autonomous driving, explains Nissan CIO
Nissan and its CIO Celso Guiotoko have made big bets on cloud computing--both with one of the company's most important products, the Nissan Leaf, and with important operational functions in marketing and engineering.
Guiotoko said that the cloud has proven its value in four ways:
- Offered more flexibility
- Provided additional capacity
- Allowed to move more investment to innovation
- Improved security
With the Leaf, Nissan's fully electric vehicle, the company designed it to be a connected vehicle from the beginning and its telematics was cloud-connected. Also, the cloud enables features such as allowing customers to trigger the heat or air conditioning remotely.
"We are expecting EV vehicles' numbers will take off in the future," said Guiotoko. That's why Nissan has put the whole backend platform for the Leaf in the public cloud so that the company has "the flexibility to provision more capacity when we need it," he said. He also sees it enabling Leaf to take advantage of new technologies more quickly in the future.
"We have the right platform for new requirements or new features that we're going to be providing in EV vehicles," he said. "We also foresee cloud technology will be a very important component for our autonomous driving roadmap."
Guiotoko revealed that the public cloud platform Nissan is using is Microsoft Azure.
The Nissan Leaf is a fully electric vehicle that is also connected to the cloud.
Also see
+ Photos: A list of the world's self-driving cars racing toward 2020 (TechRepublic)
+ Self-driving cars won the week at CES 2016, with AI and big data the unsung heroes (TechRepublic)
+ Google self-driving car at fault for first time in accident (ZDNet)
+ Nissan Leaf hackable through insecure APIs (ZDNet)
+ How Mobileye is shaping the future of autonomous cars, as it signs up its third major automaker (TechRepublic)