- The Nissan Rogue e:Power arrives this November to rival the Toyota RAV4 and Honda CR-V Hybrid.
- The Japanese automaker has moved up its launch timeline twice.
- Hybrid sales are booming in the U.S. due to high gas prices.
Despite being an early electric vehicle pioneer with the first-generation Leaf in 2010, Nissan has been notably absent from the powertrain Americans are gravitating toward most: hybrids. The Japanese automaker does offer the Rogue plug-in hybrid in the U.S., but that’s basically a rebadged Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV. Now, Nissan is preparing to launch the fourth-generation Rogue in the U.S., with the hybrid arriving first, followed by non-hybrid versions.
The automaker has fast-tracked the launch of the Rogue e:Power twice, bringing its U.S. arrival forward from mid-2027 to January and now to November of this year, Automotive News reported Monday. Nissan told InsideEVs at the New York Auto Show in April of this year that the Rogue hybrid was expected to arrive in late 2026.
The urgency is stemming from Nissan’s need to capitalize on the booming demand for hybrids and finally take on a segment that Toyota and Honda have dominated for years. Hybrid sales have surged this year as higher gas prices, fueled due to the U.S. war in Iran, have pushed more buyers toward more efficient vehicles. Sales were already growing before the conflict, but the war has provided an fresh boost.
“We believe this hybrid is a home run, so we did everything we could to bring it earlier,” Tiago Castro, the senior vice president of U.S. marketing and sales at Nissan told Automotive News.
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Source: Nissan
The Rogue e:Power will have a different hybrid setup than the systems used by its Japanese rivals. Unlike Honda’s parallel-hybrid setup or Toyota’s power-split system, the Rogue will use a pure series-hybrid configuration. In other words, it will drive much like an EV, with electric motors powering the wheels, while the gas engine keeps the battery charged or directly feeds power to the electric motors. There’s no plug-in port, so the battery is charged solely by the engine and regenerative braking.
Automakers also call these extended-range electric vehicles,(EREVs) but the Rogue e:Power is not to be confused with the big battery plug-in vehicles that are on track to launch in the U.S. soon, like the Jeep Grand Wagoneer EREV or the next-generation Ford F-150 Lightning.
The Rogue’s 1.5-liter turbocharged three-cylinder engine acts primarily as a generator, feeding a relatively small 2-kilowatt-hour battery that supplies power to the electric motors. The wheels are driven exclusively by those motors. The gas engine’s job is simply to power the battery and the e-motors and keep the system operating in its most efficient range.
“The driving dynamics, the packaging, the acceleration, it’s all electric,” Ponz Pandikuthira, chief product and planning officer at Nissan Americas, told InsideEVs in an interview earlier this year. “The internal combustion engine never drives the wheels.”
Photo by: Nissan
Nissan expects the Rogue e:Power to deliver upwards of 40 miles per gallon, which would put it roughly on par with the Toyota RAV4 and slightly ahead of the Honda CR-V Hybrid. If Nissan can deliver on that promise while retaining the Rogue’s familiar practicality, it could have a compelling alternative to the established hybrid heavyweights.
The Rogue already has plenty of momentum in the U.S. Sales rose 24% year over year in the first six months of this year, reaching 135,970 units. That still puts it well behind the CR-V, which sold 226,114 units during the same period, with hybrids accounting for 55% of those sales. Toyota sold 153,955 RAV4s over the same period, a 35% year-over-year decline. That drop is largely due to the sixth gen RAV4’s production ramp up. The RAV4 is now offered exclusively as a hybrid or a plug-in hybrid.
Despite being a latecomer to the hybrid SUV party, the timing couldn’t have been better for the Rogue e:Power’s arrival. Now whether it can close the gap with the RAV4 and CR-V will be the real test starting in November.
Contact the author: suvrat.kothari@insideevs.com
