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There are several different ways car manufacturers can combine petrol and electric power to make their hybrid cars, but Nissan’s e-Power system is one of the simplest. The setup, as found in the Qashqai and X-Trail, uses an electric motor to drive the wheels and a petrol engine to generate electricity – no complicated gearbox setup, no shuffling power between the engine and the motor. Simple.

In practice, this system has some pros and cons – it’s nice to drive, but it always felt a bit strained and noisy at higher speeds as the engine struggled to pump enough current into the battery to keep it topped up. Fuel economy on the motorway was pretty poor, too. But Nissan’s updated its e-Power system and reckons the new generation fixes all that. Does it? We headed out to Nissan’s technical centre in Barcelona to find out.

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What is Nissan e-Power?

e-Power is what Nissan calls its self-charging hybrid engine. It’s fitted to the Qashqai and the X-Trail and is Nissan’s equivalent to the hybrid systems used in alternatives such as the Renault Austral, Toyota RAV4, or Kia Sportage.

All three of those cars have different systems for combining petrol and electric power. All have their good points and bad points but they are fiendishly complicated, with gearboxes, power transfer and various driving modes.

e-Power, on the other hand, seems really simple on paper. It’s a bit like if Nissan had made a fully electric Qashqai, and then plugged in a petrol generator. There’s no physical connection from the engine to the wheels – the car is always driven by the powerful electric motor, so it feels just like a fully electric car to drive. The petrol engine then cuts in and out, or revs up, to keep the car’s battery topped up depending on demand.

What’s new?

The new e-Power system isn’t much more powerful than the one it replaces – instead, Nissan’s worked to make it quieter and more economical. One way it’s done that is by integrating everything into a single unit rather than having separate components bolted together. This saves weight, reduces friction losses within the system and makes the whole thing stiffer to minimise vibration.

The petrol engine itself is all-new – it’s still a 1.5-litre turbocharged three-cylinder, but it has a bigger turbocharger, uses new lower-friction oil and uses ‘STARC’ combustion to improve efficiency. We don’t really know what that means either, but we can tell you that it stands for ‘Strong Tumble & Appropriately stretched Robust ignition Channel’. Great!

Nissan promises a significant noise reduction, and much-improved fuel economy. The claimed figure has risen from 53.3mpg to 62.7mpg, and CO2 emissions have dropped from 119g/km to 102g/km. Power stays the same at 190hp in normal mode, but that now goes up to 202hp in ‘Sport’. Service intervals have also gone from 9,000 miles to 12,000, as an added bonus.

Can you tell the difference?

The changes aren’t apparent immediately because just like it did before the Qashqai pulls away on electric power alone and keeps that up at low speeds around town. However, as soon as the engine starts up you’ll hear (or not) the improvements.

Whereas before the engine was quite thrummy, it’s now quiet enough that if you have music playing you probably won’t be able to tell when it’s on or off without paying very close attention.

Put your foot down and the change is much more apparent. The old car immediately spins up to quite an unpleasant droning sound, and even when it settles back down at a cruise it’s still quite noisy and noticeable. The new system is far quieter, and even when you can hear it the engine note is much less irritating.

It’s not quite as quiet as a proper electric car, but it’s up there with the best hybrids. Compared to the alternatives, e-Power feels smoother and sounds nicer than the system fitted to a Hyundai Tucson or Kia Sportage. It doesn’t have the annoyingly clunky feel under hard acceleration that you get from a Renault Austral, and it doesn’t sound so strained under heavy acceleration as a Toyota RAV4.

And while we didn’t see 62mpg, we did return an impressive 56mpg on a motorway run. In the previous e-Power, you’d struggle to hit 40mpg at a 70mph cruise. That means a range between fillups of over 600 miles, definitely into diesel territory.

It doesn’t have quite as much of an urgent feel as some of the alternatives, though. The Qashqai isn’t a small car, and while 190hp sounds like a good chunk it’s being delivered by an electric motor – which means you get loads of torque from a standstill but it rapidly tapers off at higher speeds. There’s less in reserve for overtakes or fast sliproads than you get from a more traditional hybrid.

And despite the improved emissions, the new e-Power still doesn’t make a great company car because it’s not a plug-in hybrid.

Should I wait for one?

The new e-Power system will be available to order soon and the first cars will arrive in September. It won’t cost any more than the old car, which is nice – and in fact the reduced emissions will actually lower the first-year tax bill slightly.

The introduction of the new system might mean you’re able to get a cracking deal on the last models of the current car, but we’d still recommend waiting for the new e-Power to arrive. It’s worth it for the boost in efficiency alone, but the lower volume makes a great improvement to quality of life especially if you spend a lot of time on the motorway.

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