With a compact footprint, low price, and available seven-passenger seating in a 4-cylinder SUV, Nissan’s latest Rogue has been a massive success for the brand. So much so that, for 2016, Nissan will import 100,000 additional Rogues from Japan to supplement the 150,000 annual output of the brand’s Smyrna, Tennessee factory. But that’s not the big news for 2016.
Nissan Rogue Hybrid is a First
Sure, Nissan has offered hybrids for sale before- most notably the Nissan Altima Hybrid- but most of those have used Hybrid Synergy Drive technology bought licensed from Toyota. And, while Nissan has offered a hybrid Pathfinder SUV for nearly two years, now, the Nissan website still lists the 250 HP (!?) Pathfinder Hybrid as a “limited availability” model.
There will be no such marketing shenanigans with the 2016 Nissan Rogue Hybrid, however. This will be Nissan’s first in-house hybrid offering with mass-market availability- a move which will give Nissan dealers a viable hybrid offering to sell alongside the Leaf SUV while also helping the brand-as-a-whole to meet America’s ever-tightening CAFE standards. “We haven’t hit the ceiling (for Rogue sales) yet,” says Nissan senior vice president of US sales, Fred Diaz. “We have more opportunity there, if we can get our dealers more (Rogues).”
The company is expected to announce the 2016 Nissan Rogue Hybrid early next year, along with plans to import the Europe-only (for now) Qashqai to replace the aging Rogue Select model currently being offered as a budget-alternative to Nissan’s mainstream SUV. No word, yet, if that model will get a hybrid version of its own.
Source: Nissan, via the Truth About Cars.
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