NISSAN QASHQAI

Popular UK-built crossover gets a box-fresh hybrid system

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The third-generation Nissan Qashqai has received a midlife facelift in two separate instalments. The first part came along in the summer of 2024, when the car's exterior styling, cabin design and digital technology were refreshed. The second part, just released into production, was centred much more on the powertrain.

This test will concern itself with the content of both model-year overhauls, although it’s the mechanical stuff that seems the most significant. That’s because the Qashqai became Nissan’s first global model to benefit from its new third-generation e-Power hybrid powertrain.

The headline sell on the e-Power drive concept is that it offers the refinement, linear drivability and feel of a fully electric vehicle, along with the fuel economy of a diesel, in something you can fill from a petrol pump rather than a seven-pin cable.

The first generation of e-Power models (launching in 2016, there was a Note supermini and even a Serena MPV) never came to Europe, but the Qashqai became the first European e-Power Nissan with the second-generation hybrid system in 2022, and now bloods the third-generation version.

DESIGN & ENGINEERING

Nissan’s UK-based engineering team describe the Qashqai’s new hybrid powertrain as the first clean-sheet reset that the setup has had. It brings an all-new 1.5-litre three-cylinder turbocharged petrol engine, as well as a pair of permanent magnet synchronous motors of the sort you will also find in the incoming Nissan Leaf.