Students at Carnegie Mellon University spent this semester working with on projects to explore the future of electric cars throughout a partnership with Nissan USA.
The class is a cross-campus collaboration among faculty and researchers at the university’s Carnegie Institute of Technology (College of Engineering), School of Design and Tepper School of Business. The classroom challenge for this semester focused on addressing issues and developing solutions related to electric cars projected to be in the market in the next five years.
Professionals from Nissan’s advanced planning and product planning groups, engineers from Nissan Technical Center North America, researchers and designers from Nissan Design America supported the students as they executed their projects. The students’ goal: developing real-world innovations for Nissan electric cars.
The class worked in six teams, each of which spent the semester working towards a single concept, presented today in the final class. Nissan has committed to moving beyond a single electric vehicle solution through the introduction of several electric vehicles, and these different solutions are designed to help Nissan explore future possibilities. Projects include: an in-car work station; an interactive dashboard for entertainment and connectivity; grocery-shopping support system; an automated vehicle cleaning system; a suite of ergonomic features to reduce stress; and a vehicle trash, recycling and organization system.
Nissan is the leader in electric-vehicle technology and will be introducing the Nissan LEAF, the first affordable all-electric vehicle designed for the mass market, to the U.S. in December.
