The whole working from home doesn’t stick as well as hoped, but Nissan still comes up with the best car for business drivers who work from home. This Nissan Qashqai E-Power has a fully electric powertrain, a battery of 2.1 kWh and a range of approximately 2.5 kilometers. Two and a half. Perfect for commuting to work. Charging becomes a problem, because on the flap of the charging entrance you see a sticker with ‘Euro 95’ on it.
You already know that there is more to it. A 1.5-litre petrol engine with 157 hp is (exclusively!) responsible for charging the battery. In fact, the Nissan Qashqai E-Power converts petrol into motion and recovers electricity under braking – that just sounds like an ordinary hybrid to us, but Nissan would like it to be an intermediate step between hybrids and electric cars. The big difference with a conventional hybrid like a Prius is that the petrol engine is never linked to the wheels.
The benefits of the Nissan Qashqai E-Power
The EV with the shortest range that you can’t possibly recharge green, that sounds like a bad idea, but in practice there are some advantages to the Nissan Qashqai E-Power. In any case, it drives like an electric car, so the full torque comes in from a standstill and the acceleration is smooth and linear up to the top of 170 km/h.
Because the petrol engine does nothing with the wheels, it can always operate within the rev range where it is most economical. Below the line, the E-Power should be about 1 liter per 100 kilometers more economical than the two petrol variants of the Qashqai. You deliver 25 liters of trunk space for that.
How economical is the Nissan Qashqai E-Power?
We drove the SUV around Stockholm with some stretches of highway, slightly hilly areas and did some small intermediate sprints, and concluded that the stated consumption of 5.3 l/100 km should be reasonable. And we didn’t really try our best, so it’s a car that you can easily drive economically.
The Nissan Qashqai E-Power does not drive completely like an EV. Because the battery was not at the front when they handed out the kWh, the petrol engine has to be recharged regularly. You can barely hear the engine when driving at a calm pace (also due to the noise canceling technology in the cabin) but if you want to insert smoothly, the engine starts audibly.
No roaring engine, if all is well
Nissan programmed the petrol engine in such a way that the speed changes with the acceleration and there is a kind of correspondence between the experience and the sound. In practice, the speed climbs at the beginning of the sprint, but lingers in the long run, so that you keep the CVT feeling; the speed remains the same as the car accelerates.
But why not just make the battery bigger and add a plug? The brand reasons that a plug-in hybrid (because it would be) is only economical if you charge in a disciplined way, which people don’t do. And if you do charge disciplined, you should just buy an EV. They have them for you at Nissan in the form of the Leaf or the Ariya, by the way.
The price of the Nissan Qashqai E-Power
In a comparable version, the Nissan Qashqai E-Power is just as expensive as the petrol version with automatic transmission and 158 hp, but with the E-Power you have more power and more favorable consumption. Two trim levels lower you will find a Qashqai with 140 hp and a manual gearbox for 35,390 euros.
It’s not the biggest breakthrough since Netflix’s ‘skip intro’ button, but the Nissan Qashqai E-Power is the most economical and smoothest Qashqai in the range – that’s worth something.
Specifications Nissan Qashqai E-Power Tekna (2022)
Engine
1,497 cc
four-cylinder turbo hybrid
191 hp
330 Nm
Drive
front wheels
stepless
Performance
0-100 km/h in 7.9 sec
top 170 km/h
Consumption (average)
5.3 l/100 km
119 g/km CO2 A label
Dimensions
4,425 x 1,835 x 1,625mm (LxWxH)
2,665mm (wheelbase)
1,612 kg
55 l (petrol)
479 / 1,422 l (luggage)
Prices
€45,890 (NL)
€ 43,540 (B)
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