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2013 Nissan Pathfinder: January 2013

We've now had our long-term 2013 Nissan Pathfinder for about a month, and some impressions are starting to solidify, while others remain contentious among the team. Most notable among those contentious items is our Pathfinder's paint color, which was chosen by vote among the Autoblog team.
Dubbed Mocha Stone, it beat out Cayenne Red by a single vote. I was a Mocha Stone supporter and like it even more in person than on Nissan's configurator. It's a mature choice that can be comfortably placed in the grouping of silver, white and gray tones buyers routinely choose most often over all the colors of the rainbow offered on cars these days for the sake of attention. Staunch opponents of Mocha Stone on the team remain unswayed. Democracy is a difficult process, people.

Nissan Qashai gets the Juke R treatment

It would appear that we're a little behind the times on this one, but a UK-based tuner of the Nissan GT-R is creating its own take on the lustworthy Juke-R starting with the Nissan Qashqai crossover. Severnvalley Motorsport claims to be the leading authority for tuning of the current GT-R in Europe. The outfit is now turning its attention to stuffing the drivetrain of a GT-R under the body of a Qashqai+2 - a seven-passenger compact crossover similar in size to our Nissan Rogue - resulting in the Qashqai-R.
The project started back in March when Severnvalley took delivery of a new Qashqai. After stripping the crossover down to its bare essentials and building a custom jig to support the body shell, it was then transferred onto an awaiting GT-R chassis. The crew aimed to keep Qashqai's appearance as stock as possible, but fender extensions and hood vents were required to accommodate the sports car underpinnings.
The white Qashqai-R seen above will be tuned to produce 900 horsepower, while a black version will get bumped up to 1,000 hp. And, looking at the build photos, we surmise that this project will take nothing less than a herculean feat of supercar determination before it's through.

Nissan not shuttering Leaf EV battery plants, at least not yet

The big news on the electric vehicle front today is that Nissan is considering slowing down EV battery production in the US and UK and source all of Nissan's big packs come from Japan. Nissan may also buy some batteries from the Korean company LG Chem. This is apparently causing dissent within Nissan, but it follows what Alliance partner Renault is doing in the hunt for 180-mile EVs. This change – officially denied by Nissan – raises a lot of questions here, since Nissan made a huge deal about building the Leaf pack in Tennessee a few years ago. In fact, the car's big price drop was due, in part, to localizing battery production. If the company is really going to give up on building the packs where it makes the cars, then does Nissan not see itself as being capable of producing an energy-dense battery cheap enough to compete with Tesla and its Gigafactory and GM (which, of course, has long worked with LG Chem on batteries)? Whatever Nissan decides, it needs to be ready to compete in a market that offers a $35,000, 200-mile car by 2017. "We have not taken any decision whatsoever to modify battery sourcing allocation." – Renault-Nissan's Rachel Konrad Nissan would not comment directly on the reported change, but Rachel Konrad, the Alliance's global director of communications and marketing told AutoblogGreen, "The Renault-Nissan Alliance remains 100 percent committed to its industry-leading EV program. This global commitment continues for the foreseeable future, and we have not taken any decision whatsoever to modify battery sourcing allocation. Nissan has no plans to impair its battery investments. Beyond that,we will not comment on speculation or anonymous sources, and as a matter of policy the Alliance does not confirm or deny procurement reviews." There's a point-of-view where it doesn't matter where the batteries come from if the resulting EV is competitive, price-wise. Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn, after all, said during a recent Twizy test drive that the battery is a means, and the objective is the car. In the end, Nissan is saying it has no near-term or medium-term plan to shutter plants in US or UK and CEO Carlos Ghosn says, "What's important to us is that electric car performance fully meets customer expectations." Whatever's going on, Ghosn has seen three top executives leave the Renault-Nissan family recently.