New Nissan Navara won’t be just a rebadged Mitsubishi Triton, will come with “lots of changes” - Related to will, nissan, 180-mile, doomed, evs

New Nissan Navara won’t be just a rebadged Mitsubishi Triton, will come with “lots of changes”

New Nissan Navara render by Theophilus Chin.

It may seem like Nissan is standing still at the moment as it fights for its survival, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard at work developing new models behind the scenes. Case in point – the enterprise is still working on a new Navara pick-up truck, now set to be based on the third-generation Mitsubishi Triton as part of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance.

Mind you, the truck is only expected to arrive within the next two years, so the firm is still being tardy in bringing it to market (the Triton was revealed back in 2023). But it should be worth it, because , the Navara will be a very different beast from the Triton, despite the shared underpinnings.

Nissan Oceania managing director Andrew Humberstone told the publication that the next model will not simply be a rebadge of its twin. “We are making sure that it’s very much a Nissan. So we’ll be making a number of changes to make sure that that’s the case,” he unveiled.

He added that rather than reskinning the Triton and calling it a day, Nissan believes adding its own technologies will prove beneficial to the truck.

New Nissan Navara render by Theophilus Chin.

“I think if we look at our technology portfolio, there’s a lot that they can benefit from,” he noted. “So in terms of technological advancement, in terms of the utility space, absolutely I think we’ve got something we’d like to bring into the market. But again, we’re going to make a lot of changes to the product to make sure it’s in line with Nissan’s expectations,” he noted.

Nissan executives have previously indicated that the new Navara will resolve some of the issues of the current model, introduced back in 2014 as the NP300 Navara. Specifically, it was the use of rear coils instead of leaf springs, improving ride comfort but causing the truck to sag so much under load that Nissan apparently had to issue fixes twice in the span of three years.

“If you go back to the launch of the [current] Navara, there were a lot of sagging questions,” noted Nissan Africa, Middle East, India, Europe and Oceania (AMIEO) chief planning officer François Bailly. “You know, you would load the car, [and there would be a noticeable difference between] the front and the rear. Clearly, we will not repeat this mistake.”.

Notably, the Triton is only available with leaf springs at the rear, and it’s expected that the Navara will follow suit, while also offering the usual one-tonne payload and 3,500 kg towing capacity. Bailly stated the truck “has to be credible in market, no debate,” adding that if it could not meet those benchmarks, “well, it wouldn’t be a pick-up truck, would it?”.

Technical details have yet to be revealed, but while Nissan has previously hinted at mechanical differences among twinned models developed under the alliance, the Navara is expected to utilise the Triton’s Hyperpower 4N16 [website] litre four-cylinder turbodiesel.

This produces up to 204 PS and 470 Nm of torque – increases of 14 PS and 20 Nm over the previous model – all sent through a six-speed automatic gearbox. It’s unclear if Mitsubishi’s Easy Select four-wheel-drive system will be used here, but what is expected is a plug-in hybrid system at some point in the truck’s lifecycle – likely also from Mitsubishi.

Nissan has previously revealed that the new Navara would be revealed globally by the end of the Japanese fiscal year 2026, which concludes March 31, 2027. That’s a long time away, but it’s understood that we won’t have to wait that long, with the truck set to arrive in Australia in the next 18 months.

GALLERY: 2024 Mitsubishi Triton in Malaysia.

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Why Lucid's CEO Thinks 180-Mile EVs Are 'The Future'

Lucid Motors has made a name for itself by building some of the longest-range electric cars on the planet. The Air sedan hit the scene in 2021 with the unprecedented ability to travel a bladder-busting 520 miles on a full charge. Nobody else has touched that yet—not even Tesla.

But Peter Rawlinson, the California-based EV startup’s CEO and CTO, thinks the future of transportation hinges on EVs with less range—way less, in fact. In a recent interview with InsideEVs, he expressed Lucid would “quite possibly” make a car with 180 miles of range on its upcoming midsize platform, which will underpin a line of more affordable vehicles.

“That’s the future, definitely,” he told InsideEVs. “I wouldn’t say that midsize would be limited to that, but I could see a variant of midsize that’s just got that 10 years from now.”.

That idea may sound ridiculous today, when “range anxiety” remains one of the biggest factors keeping people hooked on gasoline. Automakers have been pushing ranges higher and higher to capture buyers on the fence—and you’re considered an unserious player if you can’t offer at least 250 miles, and preferably over 300. EVs with under 200 miles of range feel like a relic of a bygone era, when models like the Nissan Leaf and BMW i3 were on the cutting edge.

But Rawlinson argues that someday soon many people, particularly city dwellers, will realize they can get by with a lot less.

Photo by: InsideEVs Lucid's midsize crossover arrives in 2026, and Lucid's only shared teaser images like this one so far.

Once charging infrastructure is abundant and reliable enough, drivers will get used to juicing up whenever they’re parked, he noted. And once you can plug in anywhere at any time, you don’t need hundreds of miles of extra range as a buffer. By 2030, Rawlinson believes buyers will accept a range of 200 miles for a family car.

To be sure, that wouldn't be ideal for ultra-long road trips. But Rawlinson's point is that most people don't drive too far on a typical day. , Americans tend to drive just under 40 miles daily.

He understands this all sounds weird coming from him. “It may seem paradoxical that you hear me saying this, when I’m synonymous with ultra-long-range vehicles,” he tells me with a grin. “But I’m actually synonymous with big-picture thinking.”.

Photo by: Lucid Motors The new three-row Lucid Gravity SUV has 450 miles of range, .

It was always the plan at Lucid, he says, to start with high-end, long-range cars, then apply that same technology to mass-market, lower-range EVs that actually turn a profit. The startup’s whole game plan is to make EVs so efficient that they beat rivals on battery costs, while offering equivalent range. Right now, it’s still in stage one of that plan; the Air and just-released Gravity SUV are on the market, and a roughly $50,000 crossover is on the way for 2026.

Importantly, wide acceptance of limited-range cars could do wonders EV costs, which remain stubbornly high largely because batteries are so expensive.

Rawlinson says a roughly 180-mile Lucid would only need a 30-kilowatt-hour pack, a fraction of what’s used in most EVs today. Meanwhile, costs for lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries, a cheaper battery chemistry, have already dropped to around $60 per kWh, he notes.

Photo by: Patrick George The Lucid Air Pure is the startup's entry-level car, priced at around $70,000.

“Then we can make a battery pack for about $2,500, maybe $2,000—instead of $20,000 or $25,000 today,” Rawlinson told the crowd at the BloombergNEF Summit in San Francisco, where InsideEVs caught up with him. “And that is the driver for the mass adoption of the EV to save all mankind in the future.”.

This low-range future will necessitate more investment not just in DC fast-charging stations, but also in slower Level 2 plugs, which Rawlinson thinks have been overlooked. Level 2 AC plugs aren’t as sexy as the high-powered chargers that can fill up a car in 20 or 30 minutes. But they’re cheaper to install and work great for apartment complexes, sidewalks and offices—places where people leave their cars for extended periods.

“My view is there is a myopia, an over-focus, on DC fast charging,” Rawlinson mentioned. “The narrative should be about AC charging, overnight charging.”.

Don’t expect Lucid to pivot away from the road-tripping monsters it’s known for, though. Rawlinson says there will always be people willing to pay for the convenience of rarely stopping to charge.

“That is a lifestyle thing,” he stated. “That is buying the experience of not having to charge at all.”.

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Nissan's 'Pride' Doomed Its Emergency Merger With Honda

"Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall," reads the Book of Proverbs, chapter 16, verse 18. I'm no Biblical scholar, but I think it's unlikely King Solomon wrote that line about Nissan. But you have to admit it fits in this context—especially since "pride" at Nissan is being cited as a reason its $60 billion merger with Honda blew up, leaving its future feeling murkier than ever.

Welcome back to Critical Materials, our morning roundup of the latest in auto industry and mobility technology news. Also on deck today: Democrats hit back at President Trump's plan to freeze electric vehicle charger funding, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk gets more bad news as China's BYD flexes its AI game. Let's dig in.

30%: Nissan Fought Big Cuts, Junior Partner Status In Honda Merger Deal: research.

Nissan’s proposed $60 billion merger with Honda was supposed to solve a lot of problems. It would’ve provided the flagging Japanese automaker with needed capital and resources after years of financial decline; given it a good partner and scale to develop EVs, software and battery tech to compete with China; and kept the lagging Japanese auto industry as a whole from losing one of its biggest players.

What was in it for Honda, of course, was consistently less clear.

But last week, we learned that those merger talks collapsed not long after they began, and reports are finally trickling out of Japan as to why.

, Honda’s CEO told Nissan’s that the latter firm would have to become a mere subsidiary, which was not part of the original deal and didn’t go over well. Nissan officials also seemed deeply reluctant to move quickly with detailed turnaround plans or to close down whole factories as part of needed cost cuts:

The merger talks unraveled in a little more than a month due to Nissan's pride and insufficient alarm about its predicament, as well as Honda's abrupt decision to revise the terms and propose that Nissan become a subsidiary, . But the merger discussions quickly hit a wall over calculating the shareholding ratio for the combined organization, two of the people expressed. In private, Uchida exhibited doubts about the deal's prospects, one person expressed. Honda managers complained that Nissan's decision-making was too slow, four people expressed. A public enhancement on the talks was originally set for the end of January before being pushed back to mid-February. Honda managers felt Nissan's turnaround strategy lacked details and were frustrated by what they saw as an insufficient reduction in factory capacity, two insights expressed.

Analysts weren’t especially kind to Nissan as a result, with one telling Reuters that Japan’s government is especially out of touch on how dim Nissan’s prospects are:

"I think it's a management problem," stated Julie Boote, analyst at research firm Pelham Smithers Associates, about the turmoil at Nissan. "They're completely overestimating their position and their brand value, and their ability to turn around the business." "[The Japanese government ] doesn’t have a realistic view of what's happening in the auto industry and what really needs to happen with Nissan."

So what now? Well, Nissan is looking for another partner, and Taiwan’s Foxconn is clearly interested. That may be more palatable to Japan than it seems; a former Nissan exec leads Foxconn’s EV business, and the business itself is a top investor in the Japanese electronics giant Sharp.

Either way, Nissan seems to think it’s still some kind of titan (pardon the pun, but I had to) when it’s not only losing to conventional competitors but far more advanced ones making modern EVs and software-defined vehicles. We’ll be keeping an eye on this one for sure.

60%: Trump's Charger Freeze Order Illegal, Dems Say.

He’s not even four weeks into his second tenure in the White House, but President Trump is already under fire from various groups who say his practice of freezing funds for federal programs—money already allocated by Congress—is against the law. And it’s been challenged in court several times already.

That now includes EV charger funding, as InsideEVs first reported last week. But yesterday, Democratic officials hit back, and asked for receipts on whether Musk was involved. Here’s Reuters again:

On Feb. 6 the [website] Transportation Department noted it was suspending the electric vehicle charging program and rescinding approval of state EV charging plans pending a new review. The Democratic senators on the committee led by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse noted the action was in “blatant disregard of the law.” Whitehouse asked for any emails that would show if President Donald Trump’s advisor and Tesla CEO Elon Musk was involved in the decision.

On the subject of impoundment in general, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, noted he thinks the Trump administration is teeing up a Supreme Court case to try and find out if the president has such power. Like it or not, EVs and EV charging are now embroiled in that fight.

90%: Tesla’s BYD Problem Grows, And So Does Its 'Musk Distraction' Problem.

Photo by: BYD BYD Yangwang U9 driving on a race track without a human behind the steering wheel.

Speaking of Musk, he’s got a growing set of headaches out of China these days. BYD made more EVs last year than Tesla did (a first, though Tesla still edged out more global sales). And its new deal with AI upstart DeepSeek for autonomous vehicles has Tesla investors concerned about whether it can be first and best at delivering on those big robotaxi dreams.

Plus, Tesla investors seem to be concerned about Musk's growing involvement in the [website] government while he's promising them big returns from AI investments. Here's CNBC:

Tesla shares dropped 6% on Tuesday after Chinese rival BYD unveiled plans to develop autonomous vehicle technology with DeepSeek, and stated it would offer its Autopilot-like system in nearly all of its new cars, adding to fears that Elon Musk’s organization is falling behind the competition. There’s also growing concerns surrounding Musk’s distractions outside of Tesla, after news surfaced that the world’s richest person is offering to lead an investor group in purchasing OpenAI, while he steps up his work with President Donald Trump’s White House. Tesla’s stock price has slid for five straight days, falling close to 17% over that stretch to $[website], and wiping out over $200 billion in market cap. Investors already concerned about Musk’s hefty commitments beyond his trillion-dollar EV organization have more reason for trepidation after events that unfolded on Monday. Musk’s attorney, Marc Toberoff, confirmed to CNBC that Musk was leading a consortium of investors in a $[website] billion bid for OpenAI.

If Musk is the "heart and lungs" of the Tesla story, as some investors like to say, we're about to find out how many places he can be at once.

100%: Where Does Nissan Land In Five Years?

Let's game this out a bit more. It's 2030: the year when most experts predict a majority of new cars sold in most global markets will be electrified in some way, and advanced software will be more prevalent than ever. Where do you see Nissan in that space? Does it still exist at all? Did it swallow its pride, make the cuts necessary to survive and get ahead? Or is it a component in some other business's conglomerate? Let us know in the comments.

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