After the pickup truck segment had shifted more and more in the direction of the full-size segment over the past twenty years, compact pickups have experienced a real revival in recent years. The first manufacturers to take advantage of the trend towards compact and more lifestyle-oriented pickup trucks were Hyundai and Ford, which achieved very good sales figures with their Santa Cruz and Maverick models. After General Motors recently announced that it was also thinking intensively about a compact pickup truck, another entrant to the segment could come from Nissan. The fact that the Japanese manufacturer wants to rely on a purely electric drive right from the start in this price-sensitive segment could prove to be a real competitive advantage.
Nissan Considers Electric Frontier For The USA
While American industry giants such as General Motors and Ford have already begun electrifying their pickup trucks, Nissan could soon follow suit. According to information from Automotive News, the company is considering introducing an electric "lightweight" truck. According to Tyler Slade, chairman of the Nissan Dealer Advisory Board, it would only be logical to bring an electric version of the Frontier, as the model has been part of the Nissan brand in the U.S. for decades and is thus correspondingly popular with customers.
If launched in a few years, Nissan's entry-level electric pickup could directly gain a real competitive advantage over its fiercest rivals. That's because while the industry giants' first electric models, the Ford F-150 Lightning and Chevrolet Silverado EV, are definitely in the full-size segment with a length of just under 6 meters, while the electric variant of the Frontier could join the Rivian R1T as the only electric mid-size trucks on the U.S. market. Alternatively, if the Hardbody revival was more compact, it would be the only all-electric truck option as both the Maverick and Santa Cruz are ICE-powered only. According to Slade, while this variant would be inferior to its competitors in terms of towing capacity as well as range, but he is banking on the lower operating costs resulting from the electric powertrain as an emerging selling point in the near future.
Nissan Could Soon Leave The Full-Size Segment
While Nissan wants to expand its pickup range in the mid-size/compact segment, the situation in the even more important full-size segment is quite different. Sales figures for the Titan have been below expectations for years, which, according to the chairman of the Nissan Dealer Advisory Board, could soon lead to the end of the series in North America. According to the Automotive News, Nissan is no longer working to update or eventually replace the model; it is simply "dead."
Slade argued it was probably the wrong decision to leave this segment, which is dominated by the established American manufacturers. Customers who wanted to switch from a Frontier to a larger model with more power would have to go directly to the competition instead of finding what they were looking for at Nissan. However, if Nissan's new electric entry-level pickup truck is a great success, the shares for an electric offering in the full-size segment could also rise again.