Design Development: Nissan IDS concept

Nissan has been one of the forerunners of the electric vehicle (EV) within the global industry, but its current key car – the Leaf – has arguably appealed more for its eco technology than its slightly strange-faced exterior design.

Nissan’s senior vice president and chief creative officer of design, Shiro Nakamura, tacitly admits as much, telling Car Design News: “We need to democratise EVs.” The change of direction can be seen clearly in the sharply-styled IDS shown at the 2015 Tokyo motor show and which Nakamura describes as “a bridge to the Leaf”.

Exterior

The project started back in the spring of 2014 and Satoru Tai, design director for Nissan’s product design department and Creative Box VP, says the brief was very clear. “It had to be an autonomous driving EV concept, not a pure design styling concept and one we wanted customers to understand is coming quite soon,” he begins.

Early sketch of the Nissan IDS

When pressed, Tai says the concept is looking towards a timeframe of 2020 to 2025. “We didn’t want a ‘flying saucer’, so intentionally created a realistic concept car but with some futuristic aspects. The exterior is car-like, but the interior had to show how the driver could be free to relax through the benefits of autonomous driving.”

Sketch of the Nissan IDS

Quite a few exterior studies of the proposed electric hatchback were made and, despite Nakamura’s quotes above, all depict a hatchback bigger than the current Leaf with a steeply raked hood and windscreen. The ability for these designs to help EVs go further on a single charge by slicing through the air was a key design factor, as design director Mitsunori Morita confirms:

“We incorporated our most advanced aerodynamic technology in the design of the Nissan IDS concept. The height of the full carbon fibre body was constrained to 1380mm, sharply minimising aerodynamic drag and positioning the tyres close to the corners of the body maximises interior space while enabling a wrap-around cabin design.”

Render showing light paths around the car

Look closely and you’re also see that all the sketch proposals featured here emphasise detailed light accents – from the blue body side line to the front grille – to allude to the cars’ dynamism but also to suggest its ability to communicate to the outside world via lighting beyond the simple indicators and hazard lights of current cars.

Final theme sketch chosen for the IDS

The final exterior design chosen is wedgy, low-slung and boldly sculpted. It also has a notable raised hood line that drops down at the A-pillar where the window line joins up with the trailing edge of the front headlamp and hood’s shutline, to add to the wraparound feeling of the bodywork.

Nissan IDS

Interior

Tai says the sketching phase of the interior part of the project was fairly short and didn’t involve lots of very different ideas, but one of the most important aspects was to show the transformation from manual to autonomous – or as Nissan puts it ‘Piloted Drive’ – mode.

Sketch of the IDS interior

In manual mode the car has two handles instead of a conventional steering wheel and seats facing straight ahead. Dubbed ‘rein grips’ by Nissan in reference to the leather strap used to control a horse’s movements by pulling on the left or right of it, Tai concedes that the final concept’s controls operate in a more conventional way through small inputs to rotate a steering hub connected via steer-by-wire to the wheels on the road.

Render showing the rein-grip wheel

As an electric vehicle, the IDS cabin has no need of a transmission tunnel so a simple gear selector stalk is placed within the ring of the left-hand rein-grip.

Gear selector and steering wheel

In autonomous mode these handles fold way to be replaced by a small vertically-mounted tablet-style screen in front of the driver plus a large infotainment screen across the rest of the dashboard. Meanwhile the seats turn inward to be more convivial.

Plan view showing how the seats turn inwards

Tai says the IDS team wanted to find an interior aesthetic that “expressed the intelligence of this car, not in a robot-like way, but more like a friend or a personal digital assistant (PDA).”

Emotions expressed through the centre tablet screen

The idea of the car and driver having a conversation, rather than the car merely responding to the driver’s commands is reflected in various graphical user interface (GUI) studies for this vertical extra screen. Beaming up human words and icons to express its, or the driver’s, perceived emotions like anger, sadness or happiness, the concept can also graphically show ‘its face’ to make it easier for the driver to relate to, with eyes and eyebrows to add to its written (and vocal) requests. The vertical screen was included specifically to give a focal point. “We learned that if there’s nothing in front of you – especially with men – they hesitate to speak,” Tai adds.

Executive design director Satoru Tai crouches by the foam model to discuss the ergonomics of the cabin with design director Mitsunori Morita in the back

The feeling of lightness in the IDS cabin is one of its most striking features but Tai did not opt for a completely glass panoramic roof. Rather, it has a large central spine which offers LED lighting diffusing through front-to-back-aligned slats, although it does not let in light from outside too.

Nissan IDS interior

“The layered construction with this indirect lighting is somehow relaxing,” Tai says, “so we are pursuing these kind of benefits and trying to hide the direct expression of the technology, we didn’t want to show the LEDs so explicitly.” The concept seats have a new kind of hinging mechanism – enabling the upper part to move away from its lower shell back – to reflect their dual-mode purpose.

IDS ready to be driven by a human driver

The transitioning IP and steering controls look very costly to put into production in their current conceptual guise but Tai is not so concerned with that reality today. “It’s expensive to do now for sure, but some day we might not have to use heavy LED screens, it could be something lighter like on the Teatro for Dayz concept [also shown at the 2015 Tokyo motor show].

IDS IP in autonomous mode

“We also had lots of questions as to whether we should hide the steering wheel, but for us it is a symbolic image of autonomous driving. If in front of you is a steering wheel, you may be able to override the car, but in five or ten years from now, maybe an artificial intelligence-enabled machine will be far better than us, and if a driver can override the machine it could be dangerous.”

IDS features an outward-facing screen to communicate with pedestrians

Like other recent future-facing autonomous concepts – notably the 2015 Mercedes F 015 – the IDS also has an outward-facing LED screen able to communicate with other road users, given that the humans inside may not be so focused on making eye contact with the outside world when in autonomous mode. This communication could be casual though, as in the official press photo which shows the car displaying ‘After you’ from its windscreen base to reassure pedestrians that it is okay to cross the road.

IDS includes an augmented reality head-up display

Next-generation head-up displays are also explored on the IDS and include augmented reality information across a wider part of the windscreen than current systems. Between the front seats is the Piloted Drive (PD) Commander which is the only control the driver can physically operate when in autonomous mode, and can be pressed to take the car back into manual mode.

Nissan IDS on display in Tokyo

In conclusion, compared to the Nissan’s real-world prototype Piloted Drive demo car based on the Leaf EV and undergoing testing right now, the IDS, is far more elaborate in its adaptable seating and artificial intelligence interfaces. But the demo car’s autonomous ability is well-advanced and suggests that a production car with many of the features of this concept really could become reality in the five-to-ten-year time frame that Tai suggests. Exciting stuff.

Nissan IDS

Vehicle type Autonomous EV hatchback concept
Length 4470mm
Width 1880mm
Height 1380mm
Wheelbase 2800mm

SVP and chief creative officer Shiro Nakamura
Executive design director Satoru Tai
Design director Mitsunori Morita

Project started Spring 2014
Project completed Summer 2015
First seen Tokyo motor show October 2015