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.
"You will have people who say 'wow' and people who say 'no thank you, not for me'. Based on that, I think this car will not be compared to anything else,” he said.
Cartier believes there is “room in terms of pricing”, powertrain and spec differentiation when it comes to carving out different “market segmentations” for the Leaf, Qashqai and Juke, “but I'm much simpler: I make sure that Juke and Qashqai do not overlap and Juke is Marmite."
The camouflaged prototype seen by our photographers in Spain doesn’t give much away, beyond the obvious proportional similarities to today’s car, as well as the preservation of defining cues like the heavily raked roofline and visor-shaped side windows, but clearly it will be markedly different to the Leaf and Ariya EVs.
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The Juke is not a bad car, but judging by these pic's, it looks just like most other cars out there in thic class.
And what does 'marmite' even mean. I can take it or leave it.
Ah ! That's it, the new Juke, take it or leave it.
Well, It'd be impossible to look any uglier than the current Puke I guess.