Except they’ve vivid reminiscences of fellows like Nigel Mansell, Fernando Alonso, and Sebastian Vettel driving the wheels off a screaming, Renault-powered Formulation 1 automotive, it’s powerful to get an American to care a couple of new Renault — however Nissan’s renewed willingness to work with its outdated companions means we could but get the brand new Trafic E-Tech right here. (!)
First proven as thinly-veiled ideas co-developed with Volvo again in February, the Renault Trafic E-Tech proven right here made its official debut in full manufacturing spec and trim at this week’s Solutrans 2025 logistics present. The most effective half: it arrived wanting almost similar to the unconventional and well-received idea.
And, in case you’re pondering Renault simply received fortunate with the styling, you may cease pondering that. The official press launch rambles on and on (and on) in regards to the Trafic E-Tech’s styling, moving into depth into such apparently mundane matters as the standard of the grain on the brand new Trafic E-Tech van’s black plastic bumpers:
The entrance bumper contains a big part with a black grained end. Every constituent half was the main focus of in depth design work, in an effort to showcase the general look whereas avoiding a cumbersome look. The black grained plastic of the decrease bumper part contains a laser sample, much like Scenic E-Tech electrical. This consideration to complete is a signature of the brand new Renault design language.
RENAULT
Almost each paragraph of the discharge is like this. Right here’s a bit in regards to the form of the van’s windshield that reads, “the futuristic fashion of Trafic also can be seen in its visor-like windscreen, made up of the windscreen itself and the 2 aspect home windows.”
The van’s designers care, in different phrases — they care so freakin’ a lot about this area of interest product that they in all probability doodle it, idly, within the margins of their notebooks after they’re imagined to be listening in no matter employees assembly they only received dragged into. And that degree of caring made me consider a once-and-future Renault companion who may use that degree of caring in its North American product line.
Enter: Nissan
Again in March, I wrote that the important thing factor that Nissan needed to do in an effort to stage a profitable comeback was care about its merchandise — and, in that article, I used the lowly Nissan Dice to spotlight simply how a lot Nissan used to care about its merchandise.
Nissan used to care a lot about its product, the truth is, that it as soon as did one thing that appears unthinkable in in the present day’s modular-construction, Ultium electric-skateboard-platform EV age. And what made that “one thing” all of the extra astonishing was that they didn’t do that for the six-figure GT-R or some 370Z halo automotive – they did it for the Dice.
That call speaks to a completely huge dedication. A dedication to construct two units of stampings, two units of pricy window shapes, two units of stuff I in all probability haven’t even thought of, and it was all carried out for what? To get rid of a blind spot?
Are you able to think about the quantity of sheer, epic, truckloads of f*cks you would need to give in an effort to sit in a boardroom and argue that your organization ought to spend hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in tooling and certification and meeting line re-jiggering as a result of somebody, some other place, might need a little bit of a blind spot after they look over their proper shoulder? (!)
The mere suggestion of such a factor could be a career-ender at most manufacturers, and Nissan didn’t simply hear to that unnamed engineer, they did it. They constructed a complete mirror-image of their dwelling market Dice, and so they did it so quietly that I wager quite a lot of of you studying these phrases by no means even realized they’d carried out it in any respect.
Right this moment, Nissan’s best-effort at caring is launching an “all-new Rogue PHEV” that’s truly a rebadged Mitsibishi Outlander PHEV that was all-new itself approach again in 2013. And that decade-plus-old automotive? It’s a big improve to the final heap that wore the Rogue badge … largely as a result of Mitsubishi, you understand, nonetheless cares in regards to the high quality of its new merchandise.
Renault cares sufficient for everybody
Renault offers truckloads of f*cks. Van-loads, anyway, and now that Nissan appears extra open to enter into JVs with its companions in China and Japan, it appears completely attainable that they’ll come crawling again to their outdated Renault alliance companion. And, after they do, Renault’s degree of caring may do wonders for a next-generation, all-electric Nissan Quest based mostly on the Trafic E-Tech.
Heck, they wouldn’t should do way more than change the brand on the entrance and make the infotainment graphics pink and white as an alternative of grey and yellow and so they’d be there.
And that new-age Nissan Quest based mostly on the Renault Trafic? It could supply as much as 280 miles of European cycle vary and encourage itself round US roads with a ~200 hp (150 kW) electrical motor pushing out 345 Nm (~255 lb-ft) of off-the line grunt — which isn’t too far off Nissan’s final V8-powered van providing!
Nice styling, loads of room, peppy efficiency, and 0 emissions? I’d check out it, for certain — and, since there aren’t another electrical van choices within the US*, I feel loads of different individuals would, too.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Renault.
NOTE: I do know the Tesla Mannequin X is mainly an electrical minivan, however a) the bros hate it if you name their Mannequin X a minivan, and b) the doorways are silly.
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