Nissan ‘careful’ of EV changes to GT-R

Next-gen sports cars are in the pipeline, but Nissan has to decide whether to please Baby Boomers or Millennials with future models.

The Nissan GT-R50 by Italdesign offers a glimpse at future Nissan sports cars.

Nissan’s halo performance cars, the GT-R and 370Z, represent two of the oldest cars on sale.

Both are due for replacement, and both have a rich history that Nissan does not want to damage with a poorly-reconciled successor.

Ivan Espinosa, corporate vice president for product planning, says the GT-R and 370Z “are the heart of Nissan”, something the manufacturer is actively working on.

The Nissan GT-R is a key part of te brand’s identity.

“They are true icons of our brand and they really represent what Nissan is about,” he says.

“You can expect that we will come with something on this sometime soon.”

Espinosa says the brand has to weigh up the traditional views of existing customers with the progressive inclinations of younger buyers more likely to accept a high-performance electric vehicle.

Nissan’s ‘Zed’ family also has decades of history.

While the notion of an electric performance car was almost laughable 10 years ago, they could be reasonably common 10 years from now.

Asako Hoshino, Nissan’s executive vice president for global electric vehicle strategy, says the brand is “definitely discussing whether we can move to the EV technology for the sports car”.

“If someone introduced the compact sports car by EV, a mass production car, that has to be Nissan,” she says.

“Our passion is to make the world all EV.”

But Espinosa says Nissan needs to be cautious with the future of “brand icons”.

“We need to be careful,” Espinosa says.

“Is the consumer ready to get a sports car EV? We have debated endlessly about these.

“There are petrolhead buyers who are still 100 per cent not there.”