As a five-seater, the Nissan X-Trail is a comfortable cab – test drive, hybrid | News | taxi today – an independent and national taxi magazine

For the transition period, fully hybrid diesel models will replace taxis and rental cars, until the mobile industry should also fully switch to electric drives. An interesting alternative for this period is the Nissan X-Trail e-Power, which was available for testing today as a five-seat and all-wheel drive.

The Japanese provide comfortable entrances in the front and back, because the doors open very wide and you can get in well over the curbs and go to the high seating position. Rear passengers can slide their legs under the front seats and have plenty of knee room as long as the bench seat is all the way back and the front seat is not all the way back and down at the same time. If you need more luggage space, you can open the split rear seat with a lever and easily push forward a good deal. The backrest can also be folded down, creating a load compartment floor that rises only slightly without steps.

The chassis is so well composed that you are unswayed and comfortable on the road and still have excellent road contact. The three-cylinder gasoline engine with a displacement of 1.5 liters, which is well sealed and indistinguishable from a four-cylinder, makes its contribution to high driving comfort. The unusual thing is that it runs only one generator, which transfers power directly to the electric motor (for front-wheel drive) or two electric motors (for all wheels) or to feed the battery. It is also charged on the go via recharging, which works well in e-Pedal mode. Unfortunately, you have to restart it after each engine start.

Especially on the Autobahn, the engine speed limit is raised frequently without having any noticeable effect on acceleration. Except when accelerating the cruise control, this is not as exciting as the roar of the CVT transmission in Toyota hybrids before, but it also takes some getting used to. Those who like quiet acceleration will enjoy the e-Power concept, though it’s not as fuel-efficient as the comparably sized Toyota RAV4 full hybrid. While the 2020 was satisfied with an average consumption of 5.35 liters per 100 kilometers, the Nissan X-Trail used an average of 7.26 liters of Super for most of the road at a maximum speed of 130 km / h.

The test report will appear in one of the upcoming issues of taxi today. Interested readers can download detailed test information and price list from April 2023 as pdf files in the download area of ​​this report.