Nissan sees price parity for EVs and e-Power vehicles

YOKOHAMA, Japan — In a push to sell less-costly, better-performing electrified vehicles, Nissan is planning a next-generation electric powertrain lineup that will debut in 2026.

The new technology will enable Nissan to achieve price parity between its internal-combustion offerings and its e-Power hybrid offerings in 2026 and its full-electric and gasoline-burning vehicles in 2030, executives said at a briefing Wednesday.

The advance will give Nissan an integrated powertrain unit that is 10 per cent smaller in size and costs 30 per cent less to produce. It will be used across full-electric offerings and e-Power vehicles, replacing a patchwork of different powertrains currently in use.

The new range will streamline product development, while cutting costs and improving performance, Senior Vice President Toshihiro Hirai said during a preview of the technology at Nissan's global headquarters.

Key to the strategy is increasing commonality and reducing complexity.

"For new electric vehicles, we would like to reduce diversity," said Hirai, head of Nissan's powertrain and EV engineering division.

He said the powertrains will start to debut in 2024 or 2025 and scale up to mass production in 2026.

Hirai did not say what vehicles the powertrain units will debut in. But the systems can be deployed across everything from Japanese-market minivehicles to the American-size D-segment and above.

In 2026, Nissan will add four new EVs to the North American market made for the Nissan and Infiniti brands at its Canton, Miss., plant. A next-generation Nissan Leaf is also expected in that time frame.

While Nissan has not committed to bringing its e-Power hybrid setup to the North American market, Hirai suggested that the powertrain may have applications in body-on-frame vehicles, such as trucks.

Nissan calls the new setup "x-in-1" because it integrates multiple electric drivetrain components into a single module, replacing a bulky, bolt-on approach used in today's vehicles.

The 3-in-1 setup is geared toward full EVs and combines the motor, inverter and reducer into a module enclosed in a single casing. The 5-in-1 setup will be used in Nissan's e-Power variants and combine the motor, inverter, generator, reducer and increaser.

The reducer slows the revolutions per minute of the electric motor to a speed that will turn the axle and wheels. The increaser speeds up the revolutions of the e-Power's gasoline engine to spin the generator that recharges the system's battery. In both the EV and e-Power setups, only the electric motor provides the mechanical force that powers the cars.

The new approach allows for more compact, less costly packaging.

Nissan declined to disclose who will make the individual components. But the final modules will be assembled by Nissan-affiliated transmission supplier Jatco.

Hirai said Nissan will likely produce key components in-house at lower volumes. But at higher volumes above 200,000, Nissan will likely seek suppliers to produce them.

The x-in-1 powertrains were developed independently by Nissan without input from its alliance partners Renault or Mitsubishi, said Akihiro Shibuya, Alliance director for powertrain and EV engineering. The partners could be offered the technology, but nothing is decided, he said.

Nissan's powertrain announcement came a week after it announced plans for a more rapid move to global electrification. Last week, it said it expects to get 44 per cent of its global sales from EV or e-Power vehicles by its 2026 fiscal year, up from an earlier vision of 40 per cent announced in 2021.

COO Ashwani Gupta said Nissan will simplify powertrain designs and consolidate platforms to cut cost and weight. In the 2020 fiscal year, for example, Nissan had 49 powertrains, covering four electrified and 45 internal-combustion offerings. By 2030, that powertrain portfolio will be whittled down to three electrified and 16 fuel-burning ones.

Nissan expects to achieve cost parity between its e-Power and internal-combustion offerings partly by adopting the new modular powertrain technology.

Further cost reduction will come from slashing the amount of rare earth materials used in motor magnets. The upcoming motors will use less than 1 per cent of the rare earths that were used in the first-generation Nissan Leaf EV in 2011, Nissan said.

Moreover, Nissan will improve the systems' overall efficiency by adopting silicon-carbide semiconductors in inverters to reduce overall size and energy loss.

Looking further ahead, Hirai said Nissan will be able to achieve cost parity between full EVs and internal combustion in 2030 thanks to the introduction of solid-state batteries.

Nissan expects to bring those advanced power packs to market in 2028 and reach mass-market scale in 2030. Hirai said solid-state batteries will enable further cost reductions partly because they will be able to ditch the use of expensive nickel and cobalt materials.

Nissan also expects the overall manufacturing process to be cheaper for solid state.