Nissan MiXim: The Future Is Digital

2023 Author: Eric Donovan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-08-25 09:36

The Nissan study MiXim looks like a mobile computer game. We have already seen the futuristic vehicle up close.

By Sebastian Viehmann

The Nissan MiXim stands there like a spaceship on wheels, its slit-like LED headlights sparkling enterprisingly. It is 3.7 meters long and only 1.4 meters high. In front of the 19-inch rear wheels are two air inlets, shaped like diamonds. The side windows extend into the roof, separated by a dramatically sloping bead that leads through the middle of the doors. Of course, you don't just open them - the wing doors first float outwards and then gently upwards. They provide a view of a futuristically styled interior. Instead of four seats, there are three, with the driver in the middle. If you want to get in or out, the driver and front passenger seats swivel elegantly to the side by 35 degrees.

Brightly colored digital displays

Those who like to play with the Playstation will immediately feel at home in the MiXim cockpit. There are no conventional instruments, everything takes place on two large LCD screens. Brightly colored digital displays provide information about the energy supply, temperature or speed. The only thing missing for the computer game is displays for the number of points collected and the lives already used. It is steered with a control horn like an airplane. To the right and left of it, electronics junkies have four USB ports that they can use to connect mobile devices to the car.

Question of perception

On the central screens you can see what the cameras are recording outside. And they sit everywhere: front, back, in front of the wheels. So you can conjure up the trip from various perspectives on the screen. “Today's young people have a different perception of reality. You look at the world through the computer,”says Francois Bancon, head of the Nissan research laboratory. The MiXim also completely dispenses with exterior mirrors. Small camera eyes take over the annoying look backwards. The MiXim is not, according to Nissan, an outlook on upcoming production cars - such as the new Micra. The Japanese want to test how young target groups react to the design ideas of the MiXim. “If the automotive industry wants to survive in the long term, we have to be able to get future generations excited about cars. Young target groups have lost the enthusiasm for cars, which used to be almost a matter of course,”says Nissan's head of design Shiro Nakamura.

Pure electric drive

For Germany, one cannot quite share this pessimism. After all, the auto nation enjoys a youthful screwdriver and tuning scene, in which sometimes a fly no longer fits between the side skirts and the asphalt and in which nobody (at least not the TÜV) knows how many well-bred little horses are romping about under the bonnet. For Nissan, on the other hand, the future is apparently totally digital - and of course ecologically correct. “In 2015 or 2020 you will either be a green person or no longer exist,” believes designer Francois Bacon. The MiXim drives purely electrically. The electric motor, which was featured in the “EFFIS” study four years ago, has two output shafts that can be activated independently of one another. The MiXim is therefore an electric all-wheel drive. Nissan also relies on lithium-ion batteries. The power dispensers are particularly efficient and compact to install. Nissan specifies the range of the MiXim at around 250 kilometers. The maximum speed is 180 km / h (an unrestrained frenzy for seasoned greens, of course).

Still waiting

Until electric drives and fuel cells experience a breakthrough across the board, Nissan will continue to refine conventional engines. The Japanese want to put a three-liter car for Japan on the wheels by 2010. A completely independently developed hybrid model should also be ready by then. With the Nissan Altima Hybrid, which is already available in the USA, the technology still comes from a supplier company. According to the Japanese, the first all-electric series car can be expected from Nissan "in the first few years of the next decade."