Ladies and gentlemen, the Nissan Kicks e-Power. Ahead of the B-SUV’s launch next month (after what has seemed like an eternity) at the Kuala Lumpur International Motor Show (KLIMS) 2024, we’ve given you a full gallery and specs. Now that we’ve taken the car on a trip to Melaka and back courtesy of Edaran Tan Chong Motor (ETCM), it’s time to go deep.
Let’s start with size. The Kicks’ 4,290-mm length and 1,760-mm width place it between the Perodua Ativa and the Proton X50 in the horizontal sense, but its 1,605-mm height makes it as tall as the X50 and slightly taller than the Chery Omoda 5 and Honda HR-V. No beating the 1,635-mm tall boy Ativa, though. The Kicks’ 2,615-mm wheelbase just about equals the HR-V; in other words, between the X50 and O5.
Honey, I expanded the Almera? Quite – sharp edges all around, V-Motion face and squinting LED headlamps. I particularly like the side profile, with its ‘floating roof’, upswept C-pillar kink that’s sharper than the Almera’s, and the deep swage lines along the doors. Together with the connected LED tail lamps, roof rails and 17-inch five-spoke alloys wrapped in 205/55 Yokohama BluEarths, the Kicks is a sight for my sore eyes at least.
It’s Almera-like inside, too. You’ll recognise the flat-bottomed steering wheel (rake- and reach-adjustable), padded dashboard with contrasting-colour opportunities (brown here), eight-inch touchscreen, half-analogue-half-digital instrument cluster, circular air vents and single-zone auto air-con control panel, but of course here you get a stubby e-Power-specific gear lever, an electronic parking brake with auto hold, Drive Mode button and an EV mode switch.
It’s a nice place to be – I actually like the brown bits, which you’ll also find on the door cards and seats courtesy of the range-topping VLT, although mine could be an unpopular opinion in the face of Malaysians’ penchant for all-black interiors. The tops of the dashboard and door cards are hard plastic, but the brown padded bits go some way towards elevating the atmosphere.
In a time when car interiors are looking more and more like cinemas, the half-analogue-half-digital instrument cluster does unfortunately look old hat. The seven-inch unit’s graphics are fine, legible and fairly modern-looking, but it’s completely at odds with the big traditional speedo and its trip reset knob poking out of the glass, which reminds you of the Kicks’ age.
Fighting back the years are the very-intuitive touchscreen (with wired Apple CarPlay/Android Auto) and digital rear-view mirror (VLT only) – you turn the latter on simply by flicking the lever beneath, just as you do to dim a conventional mirror. This is a B-segment-first in Malaysia.
I find it a boon – the view is very wide-angle and won’t be blocked by D-pillars, rear passengers’ heads and tall items in the boot. Even in heavy rain, although you would still need to operate the back wiper from time to time, you will see better than with a conventional mirror on the whole.
The manually-adjustable Zero Gravity front seats, while a little narrow on the thighs, are very supportive and comfortable. Also narrow is the centre console, being just wide enough to house dual cupholders (with two ‘floor’ settings to fit big and small cups) lengthwise. It follows that the armrest box is also narrow, and opening it reveals a shallow cubby that could probably only take a bi-fold wallet and some keys at best.
Back seat space is acceptable – no centre armrest nor rear air-con vents, but you do get two USB-A charging ports. The boot swallows a very respectable 423 litres; if you need more, the back seats fold 60:40, but the load floor is not flat and there’s quite a big protrusion on the floor where the seats split. Under the boot floor you’ll find a tyre repair kit instead of a spare tyre.
This is the facelifted first-gen Kicks that launched in Thailand over four years ago (you read that right and it’s not the new second-gen, no RHD nor e-Power for that yet), although Malaysia now gets the second-gen e-Power powertrain (updated for Japan, Thailand and Singapore in 2022), which increases the battery’s capacity from 1.57 to 2.06 kWh and the number of cells from 80 to 96.
Nissan says the second-gen e-Power powertrain is more compact, lighter and offers better performance. In the Kicks, which is the first e-Power model in Malaysia, a 1.2 litre three-cylinder engine acts purely as a generator to charge a 2.06 kWh battery that feeds a front-mounted 129 PS/280 Nm electric motor.
It’s a series hybrid in the same vein as the Perodua Ativa Hybrid, the Mazda MX-30 R-EV and the BMW i3 REx. Since the petrol engine never drives the wheels, it’s an EV where propulsion is concerned. It’s an EV with zero range anxiety, but not zero emissions. And no, you can’t plug it in to charge.
Unsurprisingly, the Kicks e-Power is very EV-like to drive – instant torque and silent progress. Around town, you really wouldn’t realise that the petrol engine has kicked in unless you’re keeping an eye on the instrument cluster – there are next to no vibrations despite it being a three-cylinder. You’d really have to perk up your ears to hear just a muted hum. Of course, the engine wake-up is more discernible when you’re waiting at the lights, but overall, refinement levels are very high.
I said it feels like an EV to drive, didn’t I? But it can also feel like an ICE vehicle at times – bear with me. You know when you give a CVT vehicle the beans, you hear the engine first before vehicle speed catches up? Well, it’s uncannily the opposite here. Floor it and the EV-like instant torque shoves you forward, but a split second later you hear the engine, and the revs correspond very closely to throttle position (like an ICE car) as it toils to charge the battery based on your right foot’s demand.
I must reiterate here that at no point is engine operation intrusive or rough in the slightest. This is without doubt the Kicks e-Power’s top strength – its quietness. Even at speed, I can only stop short of saying there’s zero road and wind noise, lest someone brings out a NASA-grade decibel meter to prove me wrong.
A 0-100 km/h time of 9.5 seconds is all well and good; what’s perhaps more impressive is its mid-range acceleration of 100-120 km/h in four seconds flat. Indeed, when you ask for more power at highway speeds, the Kicks e-Power simply complies, the speedo needle climbing relentlessly in a manner you wouldn’t expect from a 129 PS/280 Nm car.
Let’s talk modes. Besides Normal, there are Eco and Sport which influence throttle response and increase regen braking (Normal has the least amount of regen). Funnily enough, EV mode, which tells the engine not to wake up, can only be engaged when you’re in Eco or Sport, but because the battery is small, you’ll only manage at best 2.5 km of zero-emissions driving (and that’s if you do a constant 40 km/h and your battery is full) before the engine has to intervene.
Since the system always tries to keep the battery’s state of charge between 20% and 80%, how do you maximise EV-only driving? Well, there’s a hidden Charge mode, accessible by holding the EV mode switch for two seconds. The engine will then come alive and stay alive until it has fully charged the battery.
The ride is on the comfortable side of stiff, while handling, although the Kicks is light on its feet, is perhaps par for the course. The e-Pedal Step is unlike the Leaf’s in that the car will slow to a creep instead of coming to a complete stop when you get off the throttle.
Standard safety equipment includes seven airbags, AEB and Intelligent Driver Alertness – the top VLT spec adds adaptive cruise control (VL gets normal cruise control), a 360 camera, blind spot warning and rear cross traffic alert. Warranties? Five years/100,000 km for the vehicle and eight years/160,000 km for the battery, ECU, inverter and electric motor.
Nissan touts an NEDC figure of 21.7 km/l and a max range of 900 km on a 41-litre tank of petrol. From PJ to Melaka, 16 cars covered 231 km solely on trunk roads and were rebrimmed at the destination. The drive was quite spirited with a fair bit of overtaking, and the median car used 13.99 litres of petrol, yielding 16.5 km/l. It was half-B-road, half-highway on the way back, and although we did not rebrim the cars this time, my readout hovered around 15 km/l in spite of a good turn of speed on the highway.
All in all, it’s not going to be a breeze for ETCM’s first all-new model in four years. Even before we single out the hybrid rivals (upcoming Toyota Corolla Cross Hybrid RM140k estimated, Honda HR-V e:HEV RM142k, Haval H6 HEV RM140k), the B-SUV market is a very red ocean, with some C-SUVs eating into the pie as well (Proton X70 RM99k-127k, Chery Tiggo 7 RM124k, Jaecoo J7 2WD RM139k).
And these are all CKD. Our Nissan Kicks e-Power is going to come CBU from Thailand. But who knows – if ETCM can somehow get the all-important pricing right, this car could just be the viable quiet, comfortable and good-looking alternative the market needs.
Nissan Kicks e-Power VLT Malaysia drive gallery
Nissan Kicks e-Power VLT two-tone in Malaysia full gallery
Nissan Kicks e-Power VLT two-tone in Malaysia showroom
Nissan Kicks e-Power VL in Malaysia showroom
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