Charging in on Tesla? Nissan Qashqai, X-Trail, and Juke electric cars due by 2025: report

The popular Nissan SUV range will build on the e-Power hybrids to include fully electric variants by 2025, according to reports out of Europe.

According to Autocar, these electric variants would likely be for each car's mid-life refresh, with the new-generation versions of the Qashqai and X-Trail only recently launching to the market globally, although the latter went on sale in the US a couple of years ago.

Nissan's European boss, Guillaume Cartier, said the brand needed to move fast to ensure fully electric cars make up more than half of its global sales by 2030, with a big focus on the European market, where a combustion vehicle ban (for new vehicle sales) by 2035 just officially became law.

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It also comes as Nissan and Renault committed to a redesigned and rebalanced alliance, where the Japanese and French giants will own equal share in one another. Renault has spun-off its electric and legacy combustion powertrain operations into separate businesses, while Nissan will re-focus its efforts on Europe, where sales for the Japanese giant languished under the previous arrangement.

Both brands committed to working together on both lower cost and more premium EV offerings, at least in Europe.

Electrifying three of Nissan's core models - the Juke, Qashqai and X-Trail - may not be the mammoth task facing some rival brands, as each one sits on an architecture that's theoretically compatible with electrification.

Nissan has been partially hamstrung by supply issues in Australia, with no sign of the Ariya electric SUV.

The Common Module Family (CMF) platform Nissan and Renault share has an EV spin-off version that underpins the incoming Renault Megane E-Tech, while Nissan's e-Power hybrid technology is already exclusively electric-motor-driven, with the engine used essentially as a range extender. To make the technology fully electric, Nissan would only need to up the motor power and replace the engine with batteries.

According to the Autocar report, Nissan's European vice president of R&D, David Moss, said the electric SUVs would use a new lithium-based battery chemistry which has "better energy density and a lower cost" as well as up to 400kW charging - but also that the EVs would arrive too early to use solid-state battery tech that the brand is working on behind the scenes.

Nissan's only electric vehicle in Australia is the updated Leaf hatch, which starts from $50,990 before on-road costs. While the Leaf was one of the earlier EVs available to the Australian market, its sales have been middling when compared to the popular Tesla Model 3 and it now faces increased competition from new, more affordable rivals, like the MG ZS EV and BYD Atto 3.

The Leaf is expected to be replaced by a fully electric small SUV in the near future.

The popular Nissan SUV range will build on the e-Power hybrids to include fully electric variants by 2025, according to reports out of Europe.

Nissan has been partially hamstrung by supply issues in Australia, with no sign of the Ariya electric SUV, the late arrival of e-Power hybrid versions of the Qashqai and X-Trail, as well as limited supply of the Pathfinder large SUV which has seen its range cut down to just two high-spec variants shortly after its debut.

Nissan Australia said it was still "very interested" in the Ariya, which it saw as a "high priority" however the limited supply of the EV was focused on the brand's current key markets of the US, Europe, China, and Japan. "The challenge for us is that we don't have any strong [emissions or EV sales] targets to hit in Australia which might push us up the priority list," a spokesperson said.

The brand also said there should be good supply of the Qashqai and X-Trail, but it will depend on the location of the buyer and what variant they might want. Wait times for the Pathfinder were out to between three and six months.