2020 Nissan Qashqai hybrid spied again ahead of launch

The all-new Nissan Qashqai has been spied testing again as its late 2020 arrival date nears. The new car is likely to take inspiration from the Nissan IMQ concept (below) seen at last year’s Geneva Motor Show – thought at the time to preview the look of the next-generation SUV.

The big news, however, is that the new Qashqai is expected to ditch the current car’s conventional diesel engines in favour of two hybrid powertrains. The first will likely use the company's e-Power setup, which currently appears in domestic-market models like the Nissan Note e-Power. 

These latest spy shots appear to confirm a few styling details despite the prototype's comprehensive camouflage. Headlights front and rear are slimmer, the grille is likely to be large and V-shaped, while the sloping roofline and raked rear window offer a sportier, more fashionable look than the outgoing car. 

Nissan has already confirmed e-Power technology will be brought to Europe in 2022, and it’s likely the next Qashqai will be one of the first models to use this kit. Fitted with a small 1.2-litre petrol engine and a small electric motor, the Qashqai hybrid is likely to have an electric range of only a handful of miles.

The second model – a plug-in hybrid – should boast far lower emissions and a much longer electric range. There’s a chance this version will be offered with four-wheel drive, with the petrol engine powering the front wheels and the electric motor sending drive to the rear. This is expected to become a company car favourite, as those low CO2 emissions should result in a rock-bottom Benefit-in-Kind (BiK) tax bill.

It’s expected the Qashqai wil take inspiration not only from the IMQ concept, but from the latest Nissan Juke, which launched towards the end of 2019. On-board technology is likely to mirror the Juke more closely than the IMQ concept, too. 

The latter featured a huge 840mm screen, with a second screen housing the Virtual Personal Assistant feature used to control functions like navigation and climate control. We expect the new Nissan Qashqai to lift the Juke’s eight-inch touchscreen near-enough unchanged, perhaps replacing the analogue dials with a fully digital setup.

Sharing its CMF mechanical platform with the latest Juke, it’s not clear whether the hybrid and plug-in hybrid Qashqai models will sacrifice a degree of practicality in order to house the usually bulky batteries and electric motor. However, as this architecture has been designed from the outset with electrification in mind, the compromises are expected to be minimal.

With the ongoing coronavirus pandemic slowing production and new product launches, we don’t expect to see the production version of this next-generation Nissan Qashqai until later in 2020 – perhaps not until early 2021.