With the battery electric truck market still remarkably tepid, automakers are starting to see that maybe a combination of electric power and combustion is what North Americans really need. The advantages of a standard truck for towing, the efficiency of electric power for commuting. It’s a great formula, and the Nissan Frontier Pro seems to use it well. While it’s not officially slated for America yet, I have a feeling you’re going to want to write to Nissan and ask if it could build this truck here.
Under the hood of the Frontier Pro plug-in hybrid sits a 1.5-liter turbocharged four-banger. That’s not a ton of dino-burning horsepower in a midsize pickup truck, but it’s paired with an electric motor in the transmission to pump out more than 402 horsepower, on the level with the Ford Ranger Raptor. Oh yeah, it also pumps out a whopping 590 lb.-ft. of torque, making this the 800-pound gorilla of midsize pickup trucks.
Even better, it keeps its real mechanical four-wheel-drive system with a two-speed transfer case and a locking rear differential, so it should have some serious off-road chops, and all-electric range is rated at 84 miles on the generous CLTC testing cycle. That should theoretically translate to more than 50 miles of all-electric range at real American speeds, so plenty enough for commuting on.
Then there’s the styling, which looks pretty handsome. Nissan claims to have drawn inspiration from the legendary D21 hardbody, and I can totally see it. The segmented light bar mimicking hood vents, the simple, assertive, squared-off front end, it’s a stylish treatment that works without feeling heavy-handed. The bright lemon-lime color also helps, but overall, the Frontier Pro is a fairly classy truck. Oh, and how about reasonably wheels? They’re sensible-by-modern-standards 18-inch rollers wrapped in sidewall-rich 265/65R18 meats.
Oh, and the interior’s properly nice too. Thanks to the light let in by the panoramic sunroof, we get a really good glimpse at a cabin abundant in hoodless screens, real buttons, textiles, and what appear to be soft-touch surfaces. A two-spoke steering wheel in a pickup truck is a bit of old-school cool, and bringing the exterior color in seems to warm up the space.
However, there’s a catch: Just because this truck says Frontier on the back doesn’t mean it shares anything with the Frontier we get in North America. It’s actually a rebadged Dongfeng Z9, a joint-venture Chinese pickup truck with its own architecture and electronics. That means moving production to America wouldn’t be as simple as altering the current Frontier production line as this product’s entirely its own thing.
While it wouldn’t be impossible for Nissan to start production of the Frontier Pro in America, it would be difficult, and it would be a shame if America didn’t eventually get it. Here’s a midsize pickup truck with performance-grade power that can commute on electric power alone, tow with the range and infrastructure of gasoline, lock its rear diff and hit the trails, then use its six kilowatt vehicle-to-load functionality to power whatever overlanding camping equipment you like. With Toyota not offering a plug-in hybrid Tacoma, U.S. production of the Frontier Pro could be Nissan’s chance to steal some sales from the king. It’s the sort of hybrid truck North America needs, if only we got it.
Top graphic image: Nissan
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I’d buy one tomorrow
“Deserves?” Why do we deserve it? Need it, want it, sure… but “deserves?” Such entitlement.
We deserve nothing at this point, you are right.
And here I thought I would be thinking about picking up a nissan frontier. Mid size trucks really need to get in on the plug in hybrid game!
Yeah… but it’s missing that big Altima energy.
You said it yourself in the post, this truck is the truck that America needs.
The Cybertruck is still the truck that America deserves. Warts and all.
Wow, Nissan would print money with that here… if they can navigate the tariff mess, which I assume is why the article is talking about local production. I am excited for a future of phev and/or erev compact trucks, especially with the option of legit offroad chops. Hopefully toyota, chevy, ford, etc. take note.
I’ve been saying for years that there needs to be a Colorado sized truck with about 80 miles of EV range with a range extender. Why won’t this happen? Also, I’m still waiting on my convertible EV.
Wow, way to get my hopes up for exactly the thing I want – a small PHEV truck with reasonable-ish EV range.
Everytime there’s a “too good to be true” vehicle highlighted on this site, it’s not available in the US.
Consistency is important.
And it can likely tow a reasonable load as well. Dang…take my money already.
I don’t care who it is, someone needs to make a truck with approximately these specs and a less trendy, more trucky center stack. At which point all they will need to do is shut up and take my money.
Dongfeng has really been going all in on PHEV and bettering their build quality over the last few years. Nissian could probably take their PHEV system they got from Mitsubishi and throw it in the frontier for TN production
Reasonably, wheels.
Nissan has been saying a lot about mid-sized trucks the past few weeks. Some of it has been mixed messaging, but one exec did say they’re studying to see if there’s an opportunity to have a global pickup model rather than different trucks regionally. With this showing using the American brand name so shortly after, I doubt its a coincidence.
The mixed messaging however has been from the North American heads, who are touting the current Frontier as the right truck for the segment BECAUSE it still has an NA V6 while everyone else has gone 4cyl turbo and hybrid.
This just feels like you’re toying with us. Telling us that America deserves this pickup, but will not be likely to get this pickup. Now I’m just sad I’m missing out.
They should just rebadge it as the Dongfeng Shui: Arrange Your Junk
You see, it’s a Feng Shui joke but also a dick joke. What do you mean, “don’t come back and I’ve lost the account”?
There is zero chance this thing could do “50 miles of all-electric range at real American speeds….” Even EPA rated EVs consistently struggle to put up rated numbers at real American speeds.
Without a kWh spec on the battery of course this is all guesswork.
In addition to these two issues, that 84 miles is based on the NEDC cycle – probably the most shamefully incorrect of all the standards.
This is a consistent refrain in these “look what other countries get” pieces on PHEVs, not just here but across the web, with really poor logic on the range.
I love PHEV trucks and think they are the way to go.
But screwy numbers like you include in this article just diminish the whole thing.
Yeah, the 28 electric miles in my PHEV Grand Cherokee were definitely not at highway speeds.
Not only is this the cybertruck America “deserves”, it’s the truck Nissan needs to boost sales.
“The Plug-In Hybrid Nissan Frontier Pro Is The Cybertruck America Deserves” so …. you’re saying it’s a piece of crap??
“The Plug-In Hybrid Nissan Frontier Pro Is The
CybertruckPlug-In Hybrid Truck America Deserves”Can we just put the drivetrain in the current Frontier and keep it price competitive?
Cause that’s pretty much a Goldilocks truck. I want an electric daily, but I also want to tow the things I like to tow, and go distances.
Yeah but I would want it to look like this too! This is seriously the first new truck I have seen in I don’t know how long that I actually like.
I hate the interior so much.
The exterior I can take or leave.
Ok yes I have to agree there. I hate anything with a tablet slapped on the dash like this. They always look like cheap aftermarket garbage.
This is a horrendous interior in any car, but for some reason it seems even worse in a truck.
My only fear — as an ergonomic traditionalist — is that enough people will buy these new interiors (especially first timers) and it will be considered the new normal once people no longer realize the benefits of a balances screen/switch approach.
More of this please. I am looking at the current pro-4x long box and am impressed with the value. I would hope this comes here and is a viable alternative to the jeep 4xe for the all electric commute and the gas and lockers to go into the backcountry. My JKU is not getting any younger.
Viable alternative to getting all the fire your current car isn’t doing?
PHEVs should be Range Extended BEVS.
Yep. As long as they don’t make the i3 mistake and create a range extended that can’t charge the batteries fast enough for moderate/heavy throttle needs. I know that problem has been solved elsewhere, but the Achilles Heel of the i3 will always jump out at me.
Agreed.
Parallel or series hybrids should be selected based on which makes sense for the current tech and tooling availability. The most significant benefit to PHEVs of either style is that you can reduce the size of the battery by 80%. If you don’t do that, PHEVs don’t make much sense.
The issue with most Parallel hybrids on the market is that they’re adapted from pure ICE vehicles that were never meant to be PHEVs. So you end up with an electric motor or multiple electric motors shoehorned into the drivetrain resulting in atrocious MPG for a Hybrid and obscenely bad range for a BEV, so they put battery packs so big into the car they physically intrude into the cabin, and the range is still shit, all wrapped in a bow of questionable reliability and high cost.
Personally I think having an all BEV drivetrain is the way to go, but I will say Toyota has done well with the Prius Prime and the Rav4 Prime though.
I think the gap between parallel or series hybrids would be minimal if either were designed from scratch. Starting with a BEV platform and adding a range extender creates problems that mirror those from starting with an ICE platform.
Even with their compromised designs, current PHEVs tend to have a lower environmental footprint than full BEVs, which shows how much potential is still on the table. I feel that any reliability issues seen in PHEVs are due to their relatively low volume and newness rather than any inherent design issue.
I agree with your first two sentences.
However your last sentence I disagree with.
PHEVs have the advantages and disadvantages of ICE AND BEVs.
An analogy to describe this is one I heard back in my pilot days.
“Two engines doesn’t mean you have a redundant engine, it means you have twice the likelihood of engine failure”.
The same can be said for PHEVs.
That was the thought behind the launch of the Prius. It didn’t work out that way, and the Prius is plenty reliable.
The biggest differences between plane engines and cars are weight and the cost of breakdowns. Cars don’t care as much about weight, so they can afford to carry around a bit more margin of error than a plane can. The other is that the cost of a breakdown in a car is many orders of magnitude smaller than it is on a plane. The degree to which reliability suffers is multiplied by the cost of failure to get its total impact; for planes, the cost of failure is very high.
The difference in reliability between a standard hybrid and PHEV is less than it is between car brands, less than what most people will ever care about. The benefits, however, are huge. They are the best current design for environmental impact and offer the lowest cost for implementation and the easiest path to general adoption.
The main problem with hybrid trucks is the weight. A gas or diesel truck is lighter, meaning more pounds for the payload and towing. If you are buying a “lifestyle” truck that isn’t really more than a truck-shaped-object, a hybrid will be fine.
I’m reserving judgement until I see the payload and towing numbers. Already I’m hesitant just because the interior is an acre of screen space.
It is not just a choice of payload and towing and lifestyle. I go overlanding, camping, canoeing, and off roading in my jeep without towing or hauling or loading up thousands of pounds of stuff. Camping gear is light almost by definition.
But not everyone fills a truck with backpacking stuff, some of us haul motorcycles, soil, tow campers or other trailers – a truck has to be functional as a truck.
I want trucks to have 8ft boxes so there is that.
Then you aren’t even looking in this class of truck, you need at least a half ton standard cab with a long-bed.
Maybe, but with that small of an ICE that’s going to offset a lot of the weight from the battery. And while 50 miles is great, it’s not a ton so the battery is probably relatively small.
An aluminum ICE is pretty light already – I don’t think going from a two-point-something turbo 4 cyl to a smaller 4 cyl is going to offset a massive battery and the electric motor.
Jeep Wrangler 4cyl Turbo Rubicon (4 door): 4,602# curb weight – 5,000# towing capacity –
Jeep Wrangler 4xe Rubicon (4 door): 5,222# curb weight – 3,500# towing capacity
The math doesn’t lie, both have turbo-4 cyl ICE engines, but the hybrid is 620# heavier and has a towing capacity 1,400# less than the exact same trim with the non-hybrid 4-cyl. Weight isn’t free, it has to come from somewhere.
Ouch. Yeah I still hope that companies that are not Jeep could do it better. Not a great comparison because both are hybrid, but the Prius only gains 300lbs when going to PHEV. Still more than I expected it to be though.
The Silverado EV weighs four fucking tons, and still has a solid payload. I’m sure an extra 500lbs of drivetrain in a midsize isn’t the end of the world.
That’s a much heavier vehicle to start with, 500 lbs in a midsize is a lot by percentage. In some trucks of this class 500 lbs of payload will be getting you pretty damned close to your max weight. The current Frontier is one of the better ones in the class with a 1,620 lbs of payload – minus 500 lbs of battery and you are now at a payload of 1,120 lbs; put another way, that’s one large adult more than a Subaru Outback’s max payload.
Then uprate the suspension and brakes to accommodate a heaver GVWR. Ford just built the Ranger SuperDuty, let’s not pretend the size is limiting things.
They’ve been adjusting to accommodate platform bloat already, this is no different.
I don’t think towing capacity will be a problem. The current Frontier maximum towing capacity is ~7,000 lbs. I doubt most Frontier owners are regularly towing anywhere near that, so reducing that by a few hundred pounds doesn’t seem like a big deal. If you need to tow 7,000 lbs. regularly, a midsize truck is not the right tool for the job.
I could see where payload capacity could be a problem, though. The gas trucks have a payload capacity of ~1,600 lbs, including passengers. Reducing that to 1,100 lbs. doesn’t leave a lot left over if you are driving with multiple passengers, particularly if they are larger than average.
I’ll stick with my Ram 2500 long bed. Don’t need or want a crew cab.
That’s also a full two classes above a Frontier, they aren’t even comparable.
Yes but it seems most don’t know that.
You’re in the minority, and truck sales reflect that.
I’m also gonna hazard a guess that 3/4 ton and 1/4 ton trucks don’t have a lot of cross-shoppers.
I’m definitely in the minority.
Maybe Whistlin’ Diesel cross shops them?
Username tracks
Damn straight! 😉
Interesting. I wonder how this will go with the current tax situation? I have to think they launched this idea a while ago.
Also it would be interesting to have some sort of review of the Dongfeng Z9. I’ll go search the interwebs.
EDIT: Appears that the Z9 is still in production itself, so no reviews in search so far.
Let’s see, I am at work, the link says Dong in the name. Should I click? Too late!
I actually didn’t notice, but I pasted the link from the article as well! Too many Dongs.