Because horsepower just doesn’t make sense when you’re out in the desert.
It may seem like Nissan is jumping the gun on April Fool’s this year, first debuting a concept geared towards dogs and now this. The Japanese automaker calls it “Desert Camel Power” and it’s a new unit of measurement to determine how a vehicle will perform in typical desert off-road conditions. And if you’re thinking this was just done for fun, that’s hardly the case. Nissan Middle East teamed up with National Geographic Abu Dhabi to demonstrate just how serious it is about this new unit of measurement.
The company believes horsepower isn’t a good enough metric to determine how well a vehicle can perform in off-road conditions. So instead, Nissan created a formula based on actual science by calculating an amount based on the vehicle’s weight, velocity and trajectory up a pre-determined path. That output is in watts, which is then converted to Camel Power.
SEE ALSO: Nissan’s Latest Concept is Pawfect for Dogs
In the video, Nissan engineers use four different vehicles to test its theory but before all that, they use a camel with a rider to run up a grade. From there, each vehicle is driven up the same grade to determine its Camel Power.
Just how serious is Nissan taking Camel Power? The automaker submitted its findings to the Emirates Authority for Standardization and Metrology and plans on using Camel Power for its marketing materials in the Middle East.
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