• Petrol-only line-up – no diesels
• Mild-hybrid or full hybrid power
• Four-wheel drive available

Nissan Qashqai petrol engines

The mild-hybrid Qashqai’s performance is best described as adequate. There are two power outputs to choose from here – one with 140hp and one with 158hp. Neither will set your pulse racing, but the latter option has a little more grunt and so is preferable if you do a lot of motorway miles and don’t want the hybrid.

Despite this, it doesn’t feel as muscular as the 150hp 1.5-litre petrol fitted to the Volkswagen Tiguan. That car’s turbocharger wakes up sooner and its gear ratios are better matched to the engine, which means you can take better advantage of the power available.

Speaking of which, the Qashqai’s manual gearbox isn’t very well-spaced. Even when you’re wringing its neck to join a motorway slip road, you’ll lose 2,500rpm between each gear shift. That’s enough to drop the engine just outside of its power band and completely halt your charge.

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It also needs a lot of revs to get moving and will bog down if you’re crawling around town in second gear. For instance, if you try to pull away from walking pace in second, the engine will cough and splutter like it’s being fuelled by treacle. You can learn to drive around it, but we found it rather frustrating when we first encountered it.

You can fix this issue by opting for the automatic. It’s a CVT, which is far from our favourite transmission choice. But, as much as we hate to admit, it’s better suited to the Qashqai’s 1.3-litre mild-hybrid petrol engine. It’s more responsive than the manual, even if it does rev the engine to a million when you floor the throttle.

Nissan Qashqai hybrid engine

The best option in the Qashqai’s range is Nissan’s E-Power setup. It’s essentially a range-extender, but the battery powering the motor is tiny which means the engine needs to constantly generate electricity to keep the car moving. And because it’s an electric motor moving the car, there’s no conventional transmission. That means fewer moving parts, better reliability and improved efficiency. According to Nissan, at least.

For 2025, Nissan has completely reworked this powertrain, giving it a new engine a host of fresh components pinched from its newest electric car, the third-generation Leaf. I’m not going to lie to you and say the changes have transformed the way the car drives, but it’s incrementally better than before on a couple of fronts.

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Nissan tells me It’s 5.6dB quieter than before thanks to a new turbocharger that increases the engines torque (pulling power) and allows it to turn fewer rpms to generate the energy required to keep the motor spinning. Fuel economy is still strong, too. I averaged around 50mpg on my drive and I wasn’t trying especially hard to save fuel. It also emits less CO2.

The trouble is you need to drive the two cars back-to-back to notice the difference (which I did on the car’s launch event in Spain). But even then, I was struggling to tell the two cars apart, which begs the question as to why Nissan bothered to redevelop its E-Power system in the first place.

It’s remarkably familiar – and it shares the old system’s drawbacks. For example, Nissan says its E-Power tech is supposed to provide a driving experience similar to an electric car, with instant throttle response and silent take off from rest. This isn’t the case – the motor takes ages to engage when you put your foot down.

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In fairness, though, it doles out its power more quietly and smoothly than rivals such as the Toyota C-HR. It’s only when you ask for maximum thrust on an empty battery that it’ll start to ‘moo’ like a Toyota CVT-equipped hybrid system. Performance is brisk for a car of this type, too. The E-Power system can get the Qashqai from 0–62mph in 7.9 seconds.

But where the Qashqai E-Power really shines is around town. It can drive for around 3-4 miles on pure electric power, which means you can normally complete the last leg of your journey without burning a drop of petrol. That’s great for a car that can’t be plugged in.

What’s it like to drive?

• Safe and predictable handling – not much fun
• Firm suspension gets jittery on imperfect roads
• Big alloy wheels produce a lot of road noise

The old Qashqai was perfectly fine to drive – and this new model continues that trend. We’ll start with the good bits, namely the steering which is sharp and surprisingly direct. It’s also quite light in an obvious attempt to make the car easy to live with around town.

The suspension is a little hit and miss. The dampers are a little too firm for our liking, as sharp bumps tend to send shudders through the cabin as they can’t compress quickly enough to absorb the impact. But the setup’s quite well tuned for larger undulations, such as long dips in faster roads.

We’re not happy with how much the Qashqai fidgets at low speeds, either. It’ll jiggle about relentlessly around town, especially if you opt for a higher specification with outrageous alloy wheels. If you want the most comfortable family SUV possible, we’d suggest looking elsewhere – the Skoda Karoq and Volvo XC40 are both far more cossetting.

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Another gripe we found with the Qashqai, at least on the larger alloy wheels, is that there’s lots of road noise – and it gets more intrusive as you pile on speed. It means, with the E-Power at least, the driving experience isn’t quite as refined and relaxing as it could be. 

We’ve not yet sampled the Qashqai’s four-wheel drive system, but we found the mechanically related Nissan X-Trail to be surprisingly capable off-road. Manual versions of the Qashqai can tow a 1,935kg braked trailer, while the 158hp 2WD auto can haul 1,985kg. The four-wheel drive mild hybrid can handle 2,040kg, but the E-Power can tow the most at 2,180kg. It’s worth flagging that it’s front-wheel drive only, though.