Nissan launches ‘camelpower’ to measure performance on sand

Nissan Introduces Desert Camel Power - the scientific measure of desert Performance. Photo Courtsey Nissan Motor Co.

You will have heard of horsepower, but what about camelpower?

The first unit has become the standard unit to denote a car’s on-road power, but now Nissan wants to pioneer a measurement of cars’ abilities on sand.

The Japanese carmaker - which announced its work to have camelpower recognised as an automotive unit of measurement as part of the relaunch of its off-road king, the Patrol Super Safari, at Al Maha Desert Resort in the Dubai desert - has already enlisted the help of the Emirates Authority for Standardization and Metrology. After further tests, Nissan hope to take the idea to international bodies such as the ISO for wider verification.

Camelpower has its own scientific basis, with a mathematical formula developed to measure a car’s total “cp”, via testing on the sands of the UAE desert, on a sloped track rising at an angle of 14 degrees. The formula can be rendered as: velocity x weight x sin (trajectory). One “cp”, measured by running actual camels on the same test track, has been calculated to be the equivalent of 765 watts.

“In some ways, it is surprising that such a formula has not been developed before now, given the amount of time and energy the off-road community puts into making claims and counter-claims about what constitutes a good desert vehicle,” said Nissan Middle East managing director Samir Cherfan. “The arguments have raged for decades. [This] is a means to scientifically measure and define a given vehicle’s fitness to take on the dunes.”