You don’t plug it in, and it’s powered solely by gasoline. So why is the 2027 Rogue Hybrid an EV?
The 2027 Nissan Rogue Hybrid gives the company an entry it has lacked for a decade or more: a compact crossover SUV with a hybrid powertrain. With gasoline prices far higher than they were just months ago, hybrid utility vehicles—demand for which had grown steadily over the past several years—are suddenly THE hot ticket.
So Nissan’s new hybrid Rogue, the fourth generation of the small SUV that debuted in 2006, comes right in time. You can now buy hybrid models of the Toyota RAV4, the Honda CR-V, the Hyundai Tucson, the Kia Sportage, the Mazda CX-50, and the Subaru Forester. Nissan is late to the game, and it leaves the Volkswagen Tiguan as the sole entry in the segment with no hybrid option.
What Nissan has created, though, differs from all those other hybrids. They’re parallel hybrids, in which the engine can clutch into the powertrain to power the wheels alongside the electric motor(s) that do so at low speeds or light throttle. The Rogue is different: it’s a series hybrid, in which the engine serves solely as a generator to provide electricity. That power either charges the 1.67-kilowatt-hour battery pack or travels directly through the inverter to run the pair of motors that are the only way to turn the wheels.
For the 2027 model year, only this new e-Power hybrid version of the Rogue will get the fourth-generation body style. All other variants will carry on with the existing style through 2027, with their replacements arriving in 2028.
Photos courtesy of Nissan.
Limited assessment: smooth, quiet, EV-like (sorta)
We drove a prototype 2027 Rogue Hybrid “e-Power” in the mountains around Park City, Utah, in late August. We only got two 10-minute loops, on private roads, though they included fairly step curving mountain roads. That demanded far more of a series hybrid system than flat arterial roads or even steady-state highway cruising. On the other hand, we had no chance to operate at sustained highway speeds, so we can’t speed to how the series-hybrid technology works under that duty cycle.
Our limited verdict: After doing the same loop first in a Toyota RAV4 Hybrid, then in a Nissan Rogue Hybrid, we found the prototype series-hybrid Rogue to be smoother and markedly quieter under hard acceleration. It’s a more EV-like driving experience.
Development of the hybrid Rogue was massively by assisted by Nissan’s e-Pedal, which provides one-pedal driving with relatively strong regenerative braking all the way down to a stop. Drivers simply press a button to use e-Pedal, though the drive setting, gives a more conventional hybrid drive feel with some coasting and idle creep rather than auto-hold at stops. NOTE: We had no sustained freeway time, which arguably could have put enough stress on individual parts of the system to show unusual behavior. That will have to wait for our extended road test.
With an estimated combined fuel-economy rating of 38 mpg, we think the Rogue Hybrid should do fine. Especially if the salespeople at Nissan’s dealers call it a hybrid and just leave it at that. They should stress that it’s quieter and smoother than competitors’ hybrids, though we doubt they’ll go as far as to offer test drives of the competition. What they shouldn’t do, in our view, is try to explain the difference between their series hybrid and the conventional parallel hybrid setup used by every other maker. (To add confusion, Honda’s system can act as a series or a parallel hybrid depending on circumstances.)
Photos courtesy of Nissan.
How Nissan built a series hybrid sans plug
The e-Power system has been around in Japan for a decade, and Europe for the past several years. It took a third generation of the e-Power system, though, to provide sufficient performance to compete straight across with the most popular hybrid crossovers in the North American market.
Work started on what became the e-Power series hybrid drivetrain at the same time the first-generation Leaf was in development. It uses some components from Nissan’s EV lineup, including the two drive motors: 202 kilowatts (271 horsepower) up front, and 134 kW (TK hp) at the rear. Nissan knows a fair amount about powering wheels via electric motors at this point, so that wasn’t the most challenging part of the system. But like the gasoline Rogue, it remains front-wheel-drive dominant.
Instead, designing an internal combustion engine to run as efficiently as possible within the limited range of speeds required to power a generator required extensive work. While the Rogue Hybrid’s engine is a 1.5-liter turbocharged inline 3-cylinder, Christian Spencer, senior manager of powertrain engineering, told Charged it shares no parts at all with the 1.5-liter turbo three that powered the last generation of Rogues.
That engine can reach 42 percent thermal efficiency, Spencer said. That’s higher than the most efficient combustion engines from Toyota, Ford, and others. And with the smaller battery pack of a conventional hybrid, that matters even more. As far as we know, all previous series hybrids sold in the U.S. have been plug-ins as well, to wit the BMW i3 REx, and tisker Karma / Karma Revero.
Given that it runs entirely on gasoline, the crucial metric is not miles per kilowatt-hour but miles per gallon. Nissan estimates it will be EPA-rated at 38 mpg combined, with 40 mpg city and 36 mpg highway. Final figures will be released by the EPA.
IS it an EV? Yes … no … maybe?
If a car runs solely on electric power and its wheels are turned solely by electric motors, does that make it an electric vehicle? Does it have to have a plug so its battery can be charged from grid electricity? What if it has an internal combustion engine as well? And … what if that engine generates all the electricity to power the car?
You might as well ask how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. What different people view as an EV will differ. Which is why, to be frank, you’re reading a drive report on a car without a charging port in an outlet called Charged EVs.
The 2027 Nissan Rogue Hybrid will be priced from $37K to $45K. With AWD standard on all versions, the base Rogue Hybrid SV starts at $37,065. Adding $2,100 to that moves buyers up to the SV Premium, while the mid-range SL starts at $39,065, with an available Tech Package adding a further $4,000. Finally, at the top of the range is the Rogue Hybrid Platinum, starting right around $45,000. All prices include the mandatory $1,575 delivery fee. At launch, all e-Power Rogues will be exported from Japan, though it’s not unreasonable to expect Nissan is assessing U.S production in due course.
We look forward to getting a 2027 Nissan Rogue Hybrid for a full road test over a week or so, Meanwhile, you can think of it as an electric-car driving experience without the plug that lets owners use grid electricity to cut their gasoline expense and carbon footprint.
Nissan provided airfare, lodging, and meals to enable Charged to bring you this first-person report.
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