Nissan has started testing its new electric Juke – the divisively styled "Marmite" sibling to the new Leaf – on public roads ahead of a launch next year.
The Japanese firm’s answer to the Ford Puma Gen-E and Kia EV3 is set to begin production in Sunderland in the coming months. It will play a crucial role in growing Nissan’s EV mix as the electric equivalent of one of Europe’s most popular SUVs.
The Juke EV will be built and sold alongside the new Leaf, which has morphed from a hatchback into a crossover for its third generation, and at 4350mm long is a very similar size to the Juke - which raised the question of how the duo will be differentiated from a customer perspective.
Nissan’s chief performance officer Guillaume Cartier told Autocar that buyers of the firm's SUVs “are a totally different profile, with nothing in common”.
He said Nissan’s market intelligence shows there is no “hesitation” between buyers of the firm’s current SUVs because they occupy completely “different customer bubbles”.
He acknowledged that the new Leaf is almost identical in size to the current Qashqai, for example, but said the two occupy entirely different positions in the Nissan line-up.
"One is SUV, the other is more coupé-sedan; one is E-Power, the other is electric," he explained. "Then you have Juke, and Juke is Marmite."
Cartier said the Juke EV will be purposely divisive in its styling, as have been the previous two generations, both to set it apart from its rangemates (including an electric Qashqai, due by the end of the decade) and to make an impact in the burgeoning electric crossover segment.
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