Global product strategy boss says Nissan will eventually "have to electrify the truck," but compact and mid-size SUVs will come first.
Nissan’s pickup truck lineup in the U.S. will be limited to a single model, the mid-size Frontier, after production of the full-size Titan is slated to end in summer 2024.
Obviously, offering only one truck is not ideal in the world’s largest market for pickups, so Nissan is looking to add more models in the future with the help of electrification. Mind you, that may take a while, Nissan Motor global product strategy planning boss Ivan Espinosa told Automotive News.
“One thing you can be sure about is we’re going to keep investing in the truck segment,” Espinosa said on the sidelines of the Japan Mobility Show on Wednesday. “How do we evolve … is the question that we are discussing internally. Eventually, we will have to electrify the truck.”
According to Espinosa, electrifying trucks is a mid- to long-term priority, with compact and mid-size SUVs a more immediate concern. “These are the ones that you will start seeing rolling into first. And I see trucks a little bit on the later stage,” he said.
Espinosa declined to say more about Nissan’s future product plans, though, noting that the company is looking at “electrifying many segments.” According to him, the key is “to read the customer requirements accurately and jump on the wave at the right moment.”
Gallery: Nissan Surf-Out concept
Don’t expect an all-electric successor to the Titan, though. According to earlier reports, Nissan is said to be exploring a lightweight electric pickup that could launch by the early 2030s. The automaker will aim for affordability with its first-ever all-electric pickup truck.
“They don’t want to be in the Rivian or the [Tesla] Cybertruck space,” Nissan Dealer Board Chairman Tyler Slade told Automotive News earlier this year. “They want to be in the affordable $40,000 range.”
That sounds like a clever strategy since most electric pickup trucks currently on the market or launching soon are full-size and much more expensive. However, Nissan may want to work a little more on the timing – launching its first electric truck at the start of the next decade might be a little too late.
To make its electric pickup a reality, the Japanese carmaker will likely leverage its alliance with Renault and Mitsubishi, namely their expertise in building plug-in vehicles and pickups.
Nissan has explored what a future electric pickup might look like with the Surf-Out concept unveiled in November 2021 alongside three other design studies – the Chill-Out crossover that was said to preview the Leaf’s successor, the Max-Out roadster, and the Hang-Out SUV.
At its annual dealer conference in Las Vegas in August, Nissan reportedly pledged to launch 19 battery-electric vehicles globally by 2030, from both the Nissan and Infiniti brands. Dealers were shown three upcoming EVs, including a crossover coupe replacement for the Leaf, a larger crossover based on the CMF-EV platform, and performance sedan sized similarly to the Maxima.
Source: Automotive News
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