2014 Nissan Rogue
Driver assistance and 360 degrees of cameras
Most of Nissan’s driver assistance technology, other than forward collision warning, is handled by a single rear-facing camera. The camera provides blind spot detection, lane departure warning, and the rear view while backing. Forward collision warning meanwhile is handled by a radar sensor in the front grille. The Around View monitor system and moving object detection uses the rear camera plus three others: one in front and one in each side view mirrors.The backup camera comes standard on all Rogue trim lines. Also standard are a single 10W USB jack (enough power to charge tablets as well as phones), Bluetooth, the new NissanConnect smartphone integration (more below), a 5-inch center stack display, and a vertical 5-inch color multi-information display (MID) in the instrument cluster.
NissanConnect links smartphone apps to your car
Nissan is the latest automaker with a smartphone-to-car apps link, NissanConnect. It’s standard on all Rogue models and since there’s at least a 5-inch color LCD in every one, it’s rather useful (not to mention that NissanConnect works with both iOS and Android). Nissan already has the usual suspects among apps: Pandora, Google search, Facebook and texting, with more coming within a couple months.
Want Facebook and texting, in the car? Nissan makes it less risky and less useful. If a text comes in, it’s read aloud. To reply, you pick from canned responses. Only when the car is moving at 5 mph or less does the text show up on the center stack LCD. Same thing for Facebook. The news feed can be read aloud; you don’t visually scroll through hundreds of messages and click to see ones you like.
Moving object detection was neat. If there’s a child or pet moving around near the car, often too short to be seen, the movement is picked up by the four AroundView cameras and the driver gets an audible alert and a highlighted overlay on the center stack display. There is no such alert when backing; you have to rely exclusively on the rear camera view in the center display.
The
5-inch multi-information display is quite useful. The MID is big, it’s
bright, and if you dedicate the center stack display to, say, music,
this instrument panel display can be your navigation display or
phonebook.The second row is pretty comfortable. Nissan’s quick-fold (EZ Flex) middle seats make it easier to access the rear cargo area or the kids-only third row of seats. A set of Divide ’n’ Hide partitions in the cargo area lets you raise or lower the cargo floor, have a storage area under the main floor for wet/dirty items, or partition items so they don’t fall over when driving.
Nissan rates the Rogue at 28 mpg for both front-drive and all-wheel-drive models, as high as 33 mpg on the highway. That’s a big jump from the previous Rogue and, narrowly, the best in its class.
Want to know more? Go to http://www.nissanusa.com/ Or you could always come into our Showroom and see it for yourself.
