Nissan's new model boom! "We're making a play for a lot of vehicles"

Nissan new-model boom that will bolster its diminished passenger car fleet in Australia is taking shape, with the brand's chief telling CarsGuide "we're making a play for a lot of vehicles".

One of the vehicles on its hit list is the Nissan Note, which was Japan's best-selling car in 2018, and is now due for a significant update.

That vehicle uses Nissan's e-POWER technology, an on-board hybrid that uses a petrol engine not to drive the wheels, but to recharge the battery, meaning the motor is never overly stressed, and so uses much less fuel than a conventional hatchback at around 2.7L/100km.

In Japan, the Note hatchback gets a 40kW electric motor powered by a 1.5kWh battery pack, which is paired with a 1.2-litre three-cylinder petrol engine.

While that vehicle has never been offered in Australia, CarsGuide understands its now among the front runners to lead Nissan's passenger car revival here. 

"While at the moment we don't have a definitive answer on what will or won't be possible, certainly Note would fit into a segment very nicely for us," says Nissan Australia boss Stephen Lester.

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"It obviously helps fill a key gap that we've got. There's no question. But at the moment we don't have any announcement to make.

"We want to look at the segments that are key for us, in terms of being able to attract the most customers to the brand, but also the product that delivers on what expectations are, and what customers are actually asking for, and the Note is a vehicle that checks a lot of those boxes, no question."

Other options include the Nissan Micra, currently sold in Europe, and the Toyota Camry-sized Altima from the the USA, as well as the bigger Maxima.  

"We're making a play for a lot of vehicles, there's nothing that I'm closing off," Mr Lester says.

"We've gone through some challenges from a profit standpoint over the past couple of years, but we're really on the cusp of coming out of that.

"We've got Leaf that we just launched, we've to new Patrol, we've got Navara Warrior, and we've got a number of other products coming.

"My view is that it's started, we haven't come lose to the crescendo, and it's going to continue."