Nissan to sell plug-in Rogue crossover in 2015 ?

Here is a bit of news flying under the radar.

Nissan has said for years now that phev is suitable for larger vehicles. In particular Nissan Qashqai which is same as the US Rogue will be sold from next year.

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1092490_nissan-to-launch-plug-in-hybrids-too-in-less-than-two-years" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It would also make sense to sell an Altima plugin - given how well the fusion energy is selling.

Looks like the eNV200 may be the only larger BEV they'll make:

In effect, that means that Nissan's electric vehicles are likely to remain in the compact to mid-size passenger car segment, or smaller--along with more specialized vehicles like the Nissan e-NV200 electric delivery van that just entered production in Spain.

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Automakers and most companies tend to give optimistic dates for these things. They said late 2015 so expect 2016 for debut. Might be worse if US is not one of the first markets, which is often done to limit liability on new products, like the Mitsubishi PHEV SUV. On the plus side, Nissan has said their low cost battery will give them an advantage in the PHEV space. I assume this means we can expect a larger battery pack than others and perhaps a smaller engine to increase efficiency.

It's interesting that all the people who made these statements in the article are now gone...

evnow said:

Nissan has said for years now that phev is suitable for larger vehicles. In particular Nissan Qashqai which is same as the US Rogue will be sold from next year.
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1092490_nissan-to-launch-plug-in-hybrids-too-in-less-than-two-years" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.

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Here is some old news about Nissan PHEVs in 2015.

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1067664_nissan-building-plug-in-hybrid-for-2015-1-5-million-electric-cars-by-2017" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Talking at an event in Yokohama, Japan earlier, Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn confirmed that Nissan has been working on a plug-in hybrid model which it plans to bring to market in 2015.

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There are lots of reports from last year saying plugin Qashqai will debut in Nov '13 as a MY14. Obviously it didn't happen. Wonder if that is because of all the hot weather battery problems ... if they are now happy with their new hot battery, hopefully Qashqai/Rogue will be produced in 2015.

Since the 2015 Rogue is already up on Nissan's USA website and we've heard nothing else about a plug-in version, I'm going to doubt this until I see something more concrete (a press release, for example). It'd be a great idea, especially if they could beat Mitsubishi into the USA with it, but I suspect that Nissan's waiting to see how Mitsu's Outlander PHEV sells here before deciding. A big mistake, IMHO, and it'll cost them at least one sale (mine).

Although I would personally prefer a Rogue-sized PHEV CUV (actually, one a bit shorter), might a Murano be a better starting point for a PHEV? I see a lot more of the latter around here, including some being used as taxis, and their gas mileage is considerably worse than the Rogue's.

ahagge said:

Since the 2015 Rogue is already up on Nissan's USA website and we've heard nothing else about a plug-in version, I'm going to doubt this until I see something more concrete (a press release, for example). It'd be a great idea, especially if they could beat Mitsubishi into the USA with it, but I suspect that Nissan's waiting to see how Mitsu's Outlander PHEV sells here before deciding. A big mistake, IMHO, and it'll cost them at least one sale (mine).

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If it comes it would be a 2016 model.

I don't think Nissan would wait to see how Outlander would sell - that it would sell well is a no-brainer (even anemic Energi is selling in decent numbers). More a question of will they have it ready. My guess is the battery degradation issues pushed this out from initial MY15 consideration.