2023 Nissan X-Trail e-Power Review: Hybrid Theories for Seven

• Design and Interior
• Back to Page 1: Introduction and Interior
• Driving Experience
• Conclusion & Competition
• 2023 Nissan X-Trail e-Power e-4orce Prestige

Nissan’s new big SUV is a petrol-electric hybrid, 7-seater, and all-wheel driven, go-anywhere family lounge packed into one coherent unit

2023 Nissan X-Trail e-Power

Launched: May 2023 – Price S$255,800 with COE and VES (June 2023)

Five-door, large SUV, seven seats

198hp, hybrid, VES B, 6.7l/100km

Pros

Near luxury-level interior

Quiet and smooth

Room for seven

Cons

Does not take well to fast cornering

Third row has limited leg and headroom

SINGAPORE

Remember the days of having to squeeze a family of two or three adults plus three children into a little family sedan? That was a long time ago, and something that few people today would want to put up. Since early MPVs like the Renault Espace put the idea of “a seven-seat car is not a bus” into people’s heads in the early 1990s, times have moved and big MPVs like the luxurious Toyota Alphard and Nissan Serena have become the car of choice for luxurious big family motoring.

But big SUVs have also made inroads in the ‘cars that seat more than five people’ segment, with a huge luxury example being the BMW X7, and a more modest luxury seven-seater SUV being the Mercedes-Benz GLB. Now the Nissan X-Trail has rolled into the seven-seater game as well. Actually it’s more of a five plus two, as the pair of seats in the third row, similar to that of the Mercedes-Benz GLB, is kind of cramped and only meant for occasional use.

This is the fourth generation X-Trail, with the first one dating back to 2000, at the time when urban SUVs were just exploding as a big new genre of cars. The boxy shapes of SUVs have given way to rounder, more car-like silhouettes over the years. While petrol-powered X-Trails are still available in selected regions Singapore is only getting the all-wheel drive, e-Power petrol-electric hybrid.

Design and Interior

Singapore is actually a little late with the new X-Trail, as it was already launched in some other countries at the start of 2023. It’s a car with a lot of presence, and like its smaller sibling the Nissan Qashqai, there’s a definite sense of quality about the whole package. It’s round with still a sense of hard edges, which is similar to what the BMW X5’s design ethos seems to be.

It’s a properly high riding SUV, with stacks of ground clearance and requiring passengers to step up into the car rather than just sideways into it.

Nissan interiors are typically known to be a step up above its contemporaries, and the X-Trail doesn’t disappoint, The car we had was upholstered in light coloured leather, and while the standard specification gets synthetic leather, this one has the S$2,800 upgrade which covers the major seat contact points in genuine Nappa leather. You’ll need to take note that not all the surfaces get the Nappa bits though, and non-contact areas such as the seat backs still use the synthetic stuff. The colour match is great though, and it’ll take a trained hand and eye to really know what to look for in spotting the differences.

Nissan advertises the X-Trail as having a triple screen setup, that is, if you count the driver’s heads-up display as a screen as well. The in-car, native GPS navigation system is decently accurate, plus there’s a wireless phone charging dock on the centre console.

The centre screen measures 12.3-inches diagonal across, which isn’t big by the standards of Mercedes-EQ’s top-spec monster screens, but it’s large enough for everything to be clearly readable at a glance.

This is paired with an instrument cluster that is an entirely digital screen as you would expect, customisable for what information you would like to see. A selector dial to choose between the range of all-wheel drive modes resides on the centre console, ahead of the drive selector switch that feels like a blocky computer mouse.

Overhead, a full-length panoramic sunroof adds to the car’s excellent premium feel.

The second row is expansive, with business-class level legroom. The trick here is because the car is actually driven by an electric motor at each end, there’s no propeller shaft running the length of the car like in other conventional 4WD drivetrains. This also means that there isn’t that big hump in the middle of the floor for the propeller shaft to run through, so the whole space is quite flat, almost like a typical electric car.

The rear bench slides along a rail so that you can negotiate how much space to give to the people crammed into the third row. It’s all a game of compromises as when the seats are racked all the way back, there’s zero legroom in the third row.

As you might have guessed, the default way the car is expected to be used is with the third row folded away for a proper boot, but don’t leave it too cluttered as that will impede the quick deployment of the third row when you need it.

On the whole it’s a layout that’s got a great upmarket feel, befitting the price that the car is going for.

Back to Page 1: Introduction and Interior

Driving Experience

Here’s where things get a little technical. Nissan’s hybrid drive system is unique in that the engine, in this car a 1.5-litre turbocharged three-cylinder, doesn’t drive the wheels of the car directly.

The engine’s job is to power a generator that charges the onboard batteries, which power the two electric motors in the car. There’s one at each axle for intelligent four-wheel drive, which is why this car gets the slightly awkward e-4orce name as well.

It’s a powerful car, however the suspension is soft and comfortable so it doesn’t really encourage spirited cornering. There’s no multi-speed gearbox here, as the drivetrain is very much like that of an EV, with power from the motors sent to the wheels through a reduction gearbox for each motor.

On paper it’s a tiny bit quicker in a straight line sprint than the Toyota Harrier Hybrid, but that’s not the whole story as in typical EV fashion it jumps from a standstill to around 60km/h very quickly, before tapering off slightly on forward punch.

A pair of buttons on the centre console engages EV-only mode and e-pedal driving. EV-only is useful only if you have a light right foot and keep the power output below 30 percent as displayed on the power metre. If you accelerate harder the petrol engine will fire up to help generate more power for the electrical systems. Also, don’t expect the car to maintain a steady state cruise for more than ten minutes on electric power alone. Once the batteries drop to 25 percent charge, the petrol engine begins the recharging process.

e-Pedal is that unique mode where the accelerator pedal ‘engine brakes’ the car with regenerative braking to more aggressively recharge the batteries when you release it past a certain point. In practice, we found that e-Pedal driving works better in low speed driving around housing estates, while the standard drive mode is more efficient on highways where the car can cruise more effectively.

Unlike most crossover urban SUVs, the X-Trail has a proper off road driving mode where the can intelligently know which wheels are slipping and which wheel to direct power to through the clever use of individual wheel braking. Combined with its high stance, this is a big, comfortable car that’s more versatile than many others.

Active safety systems are pretty much standard equipment on almost all new cars these days and the X-Trail is no exception. Packaged as the Nissan Intelligent Mobility suite, it includes lane departure warning and the very useful adaptive cruise control, which follows the car ahead of you and will automatically apply the brakes to maintain a driver-set safety gap when the car ahead slows down.

As you would expect from a true hybrid, the engine switches on and off quite unobtrusively and doesn’t disrupt the driving experience. We returned 6.5L/100km in fuel economy over three days and that’s even better than the official specification of 6.7L/100km.

With Singapore’s huge taxes on petrol, using the excuse that it’s to encourage people to drive EVs, we’re not going to have many years of internal combustion engine-only cars left here. Yet you’ll almost never find a petrol-electric hybrid car owner complaining about fuel economy. They’re a good balance and you’ll never have to worry about driving across to Malaysia either.

Can you drive from Thailand to Singapore in an electric car?

Conclusion & Competition

The big talking point is how expensive cars have become and the Nissan X-Trail is no exception with its S$255,800 with COE sticker price at time of launch. Compare this to the slightly smaller five-seater Hyundai Tucson Hybrid, now going for around S$220k with COE. At the time of the Tucson Hybrid’s launch in late 2021 it cost just S$162k with COE. It looked expensive then, but now they look like bargain prices.

The product itself is an excellent family vehicle that is also very versatile with its configurable seating. It may be wide and kind of long but it’s not all that difficult to drive in tight spaces, and arguably has much better all-round visibility than many large MPVs.

It actually has another credible 5+2 SUV competitor in the form of the Peugeot 5008. The French Peugeot however, is not a hybrid, is only front-wheel driven, and has just 129 horsepower from its 1.2-litre, three-cylinder turbo engine compared to the Nissan X-Trail’s 198 horsepower. But don’t dismiss the Peugeot just yet, as it has a nicely upmarket cabin feel and is very economical on fuel as well. It’s also much cheaper on the account of its simpler mechanicals.

The last word on the Nissan X-Trail e-Power is that in Singaporean specification, it’s got more than enough power for a Malaysian road trip, boasts an almost luxurious level of comfort, and is very efficient on fuel as well.

2023 Nissan X-Trail e-Power e-4orce Prestige

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