Because the introduction of its e-Power series-hybrid system seven years ago, Nissan has refined the tech and leaned on it as the trail toward a totally electric future for the brand.
But there isn’t a single U.S.-market model yet with this tech. What’s the holdup?
Partly, it’s that Nissan has focused its hybrids toward other markets. In Europe, where Nissan plans to go all-EV starting in 2030, it’s pushing ahead rapidly with the tech and seeing very strong demand for e-Power models there. Earlier this 12 months Nissan expected electrified models to make up 55% of the worldwide mix by 2030; now Nissan’s on target to meeting that percentage five years early.
Ivan Espinosa, who heads product strategy and product planning for Nissan, said last week in a Q&A session on the Tokyo auto show that the market response for these vehicles is unbelievable, and he called e-Power certainly one of Nissan’s “fundamental signature technologies.”
2022 Nissan Qashqai E-Power
How will e-Power hybrids arrive for the U.S.?
Within the session, Espinosa and global product planning chief Pierre Loing unraveled a few of the reasons the U.S. hasn’t seen e-Power quite yet, they usually included some hints about how it’d make sense in a favourite American product—trucks.
Loing argued that towing demands make fully electric trucks a difficult proposition. And while e-Power seems like an excellent strategy to electrify trucks without the range anxiety, the tech simply isn’t able to install into trucks, he explained.
“The architecture…isn’t a truck architecture,” Loing said of e-Power. “It’s a transverse-mounted engine.”
E-Power is a series hybrid system, meaning the engine isn’t physically connected to the wheels and there’s no conventional transmission. It’s in effect an electrical vehicle with a really small battery pack, with a gasoline-fueled engine on board acting solely as a generator when needed.
Nissan looking for cost parity with EVs, e-Power hybrids
That said, Nissan sees it as a key companion tech for getting EV cost down. Earlier within the 12 months it rolled out a modular electrified propulsion approach to guarantee its EVs and e-Power models share a few of the same components—in order to hit price parity between e-Power and non-hybrid ICE models by 2026.
Nissan is reportedly already within the technique of adapting e-Power to future body-on-frame trucks. Loing declined to verify it’s doing so, suggesting that the automaker simply doesn’t yet have a transparent path it’s able to announce.
2022 Nissan Qashqai E-Power
But Espinosa went on to hint how it’d apply the tech within the U.S.
For e-Power to make sense in a vehicle, Nissan needs to place a rather larger ICE engine in it than it otherwise might need, he explained.
“And now if you must go one notch farther, and I’m just talking engineering, in theory, you’ll be able to put a direct clutch between the engine and the wheels in order that, high-speed, you don’t have the issue of pulling energy from the battery and the battery gets depleted.
“There ares multiple approaches that we could consider for e-Power…many selections on the market,” he summed.
2nd generation Nissan e-Power hybrid system
Making series hybrids work for America
What Espinosa pointed to may be very near the arrangement of Honda’s two-mode hybrid system that it’s now widely installing into U.S. models, including the Accord and CR-V, and shortly, the Civic. Those Honda hybrids lock the engine to the drive wheels at a really tall ratio for light cruising conditions but otherwise they function as series hybrids with the engine as a generator.
Nissan told Green Automobile Reports in January 2019 that if the e-Power series hybrid did arrive within the U.S. it might arrive as more of a performance option; now it says any U.S. arrival could be in “big segments.” Put the pieces together and it’d potentially debut for the U.S. as a step-up powertrain for the Rogue, Nissan’s current bestseller.
Infiniti Qs Inspiration concept
Although Nissan hasn’t yet confirmed e-Power for the U.S., its luxury brand Infiniti already did—and reversed course. It was a part of a short-lived reboot of the brand planned in 2019, when it planned to roll out fully electric and hybrid luxury vehicles with Infiniti’s own version of e-Power on the core. Specs released by Infiniti included a 1.5-liter turbo-3 that was a part of Nissan’s VC (variable compression) engine family plus battery packs of three.5 to five.1 kwh—larger than typical for hybrids.
Scaling up the engine and generator—and adding a parallel-hybrid mode for the highway—might also have been a lesson learned for American driving conditions to appease cabin noise and boost highway efficiency. That’s also what GM ended up doing with its Voltec system within the Chevy Volt, which was primarily a series hybrid.
Nissan Surf-Out concept (2021)
Nissan Surf-Out concept (2021)
Nissan Surf-Out concept (2021)
E-Power or EV for a compact pickup?
Meanwhile, in accordance with Automotive News, Nissan can be reportedly exploring the concept of skipping e-Power on to a totally electric truck—particularly a compact electric truck priced around $40,000. Such a product might lean on the Alliance with Mitsubishi and Renault.
In March, Mitsubishi teased a potentially U.S.-bound electric compact truck that might conceivably fit into the Nissan lineup below the Frontier. Nissan itself has been reportedly considering a compact EV pickup, and in November 2021 it showed the Max-Out electric truck concept.
Nissan Hyper Tourer concept
The solid-state wildcard
Nissan holds one other technology wildcard: that its all-solid-state batteries may change into a viable option later in the last decade. They’ll make the most effective sense in larger SUVs, pickups, or vans, the automaker argues, because they’ll package more energy right into a smaller space, with faster charging and with less cost and maybe a lower environmental footprint. And customarily speaking, within the meantime, it plans to go fully electric with a few of its larger vehicles first—just like the larger, fully electric Nissan Maxima alternative due in 2025.
“We’re obviously electrifying many, many segments,” Espinosa said. “What we’re is the speed here; what matters is riding the wave at the best moment, because each of the segments is moving at different speeds.”
Regulation is the opposite factor. Nissan has an extended runway within the U.S. for electrifying its vehicles, where it goals to sell 40% EVs by 2030. At the moment, if 55% of its global sales can be electrified, then e-Power vehicles are more likely to be a significant slice of the U.S. lineup.
Could Nissan meet up with Toyota and Honda on hybrids? If Nissan takes advantage of the modular tech while going fully electric with midsized and huge models for the U.S., it conceivably still could—splitting the difference with hybrid small cars and pickups, and two very different builds of that signature tech.
This Article First Appeared At www.greencarreports.com
