Nissan has unveiled the IMk, an all-electric city car concept designed specifically for urban commuters.
Developed as part of Nissan’s Intelligent Mobility strategy, the IMK concept is built on an all-new EV platform and comes equipped with the latest ProPilot driver assistance technologies connectivity features.
According to Nissan, the IMk “provides a glimpse of how urban-oriented cars may look and feel in the near future”.
Satoru Tai, executive design director at Nissan, said: “As a small EV for a new era, the Nissan IMk is designed to be at home in sophisticated cityscapes as much as in traditional Japanese towns.” said . “It’s a luxury small EV that I hope a lot of customers are going to drive.”
The IMk comes with a raft of technologies to assist drivers in a wide range of environments, from expressways to city streets and parking lots.
For example, a smartphone-enabled ProPilot Remote Park feature with valet parking feature can search for a parking space automatically after the driver and passengers step out of the car. A tap of a button then returns the car when the driver is ready to resume driving.
Furthermore, an advanced version of ProPilot2.0 combines navigated highway driving with hands-off single-lane driving capabilities.
A driver can also link to the car with a smartphone to authenticate their identity, automatically apply personal settings – such as seat position, interior lighting and climate controls – and plan their commute.
Before leaving on a trip, the IMk informs the driver of the best departure time via smartphone, taking into consideration variables such as traffic congestion.
The vehicle can also integrate with a home energy system and use spare battery capacity to balance home energy needs, using Nissan Energy Share (Vehicle-to-Home).
What’s more, the IMK also features Nissan’s Invisible-to-Visible (I2V) technology, which merges information from sensors outside and inside the vehicle with data from the cloud to track the vehicle’s immediate surroundings and anticipate what’s ahead, even showing what’s behind a building or around the corner. Guidance is given via an avatar that appears inside the car.
