Nissan confirms next-gen all-electric Leaf will feature autonomous parking

Ahead of the September launch of its next generation all-electric Leaf, Nissan has been gradually teasing images and features of the vehicle.

Today, it confirmed that the 2018 Leaf will have autonomous parking as part of ProPilot.

The Japanese automaker had already confirmed that the next generation Leaf will be its first vehicle to feature its ProPilot technology, a series of autonomous features not unlike Tesla’s Autopilot.

They already demoed the level 2 autonomous driving on highways and now they are talking about the autonomous parking feature:

“ProPILOT Park liberates drivers from one of the most tedious, and at times the most challenging, tasks of driving. It gives you confidence that you can park perfectly. Sonars and cameras on the new Nissan LEAF effortlessly guide the car into a parallel, angled, front or straight back-in parking spot, reducing driver stress by handling accelerator, braking and steering input. The driver activates the technology in three easy steps, monitors the area around the vehicle and applies the brakes if necessary.”

They released this video to illustrate the feature:

Next-gen Leaf prototypes have been spotted over the past few months as the company is preparing to launch production.

Last week, they confirmed that they will unveil the production version on September 5th in Japan local time (September 6th for the rest of the world). for deliveries by the end of the year under the 2018 model year.

It should be in dealerships shortly after.

Surprisingly, Nissan openly talking about upcoming features on its next generation Leaf should affect the current sales, but the company had record deliveries for the year in the US last month – mainly due to heavily discounting its current Leaf inventories. If you can live with the shorter range and pre-refresh design, it can prove a cheap way to get into EV ownership.  You can check with your local Nissan dealer for Leafs in their inventories.