Many times postponed, the program to renew the catalog of the Japanese firm, with fifteen electrified models planned by 2030, finally materializes, based in particular on E-Power hybrid technology.
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For the past three years, Nissan has accumulated crises. In addition to the combined effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and difficulties in supplying electronic components or raw materials that disrupted the entire automotive industry, the Japanese brand had to face its own ills. At the end of 2018, it brutally separated from Carlos Ghosn, its president, and had to renegotiate the terms of its alliance with Renault not without difficulty. Failing to have renewed its models in time, the Yokohama firm was mainly faced with an end of cycle when sales of electrified models exploded.
Its accounts plunged into red, its historic Barcelona factory had to close and its market share in the world melted a third party. Today, the leaders of Nissan assure that the time of reconquest has come. Many times postponed, the catalog renewal program – fifteen electrified model launches are planned by 2030 – finally materializes. Its spearhead: a technology which has never imposed itself outside Japan but which, if it managed to convince in Europe and the United States, would offer the firm a sustainable competitive advantage.
This is a hybrid, called E-Power, whose thermal engine acts exclusively to deliver energy to a buffer battery or directly to the electric motor. In conventional hybrids, the two engines work parallel; Here, only the electric block drives the wheels. The E-Power system, which will be offered this fall aboard the new generation of Qashqai, a “crossover” produced at 5.5 million units since 2007, allows to drive an electric car without it being necessary to Recharge it on a terminal, since it is the petrol engine (1.5 liters at variable compression rate) that takes care of it.
“Last car before the whole electric”
A transition model which presents itself as “the last car before the passage to the whole electric”. This hybridization, envisaged by certain manufacturers but never marketed on a very large scale, has been successfully broadcast in Japan since 2016. In practice, the Qashqai E-Power provides driving just as fluid and reactive as a purely electric vehicle, with accelerations frank who intervene without the heat engine, which remains discreet, giving the impression of getting carried away, as is the case on certain hybrids.
In order to help make the car quieter, an acoustic box produces vibrations which neutralize part of those caused by the four-cylinder. Tested on the very police roads in the Stockholm region, in Sweden, the car was content with an average barely 5 liters per 100 kilometers. A flattering result, but which will be confirmed in conditions more in accordance with the reality of French automobile traffic. In particular on the highway, land less favorable to electrified cars than the urban and peri-urban routes, use to which the Qashqai e-Power is mainly intended.
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