Nissan's ProPILOT

Nissan describes their ProPILOT driver assist technology as, "a hands-on driving assistant designed to help drivers during long highway trips and the stop and go traffic of your daily commute... The ProPILOT Assist system combines Nissan's Intelligent Cruise Control and Steering Assist technologies and includes a stop and hold function that can bring the vehicle to a full stop, hold in place and can bring you back up to speed when traffic starts moving again.

One of the reasons we were excited about the opportunity to test the Leaf SL Plus was that it is the only trim level that offers the ProPILOT driver assist technology. Having previous experience testing Tesla's Autopilot system we were very interested in being able to compare the two. Nissan's Intelligent Cruise Control was easy to use and extremely reliable at maintaining distance from a vehicle directly in front of the our position, but was not able to be used well if the lanes ahead were merging together. We did find however that it was trustworthy when coming to a complete stop. The Steering Assist was also effective, but limited. During our test it had difficulty with finding the center of the lane and would sometimes drift from one side of the lane to the other.

​Overall, we were pleased with the capability of both systems. Nissan has a long way to go before matching what Tesla offers, but what they have is working well enough for now, and we anticipate improvements over time.