Nissan is reportedly going to launch a bespoke electric sports car under its Nismo performance division by the end of the decade. Details are few and far between right now, but this was confirmed by a company official who did drop a few hints that can help us get a general idea of what the company is going for and what to expect.
Autocar spoke to, Takao Katagiri, the CEO of Nissan’s Nismo, who confirmed the vehicle was on his way when he said
[There] is a very, very important vision [in Europe] for Nissan. It’s around the heart of this [new car]. This region [the UK] is very, very special for us, especially [for] performance cars. So one thing I can say is please wait. We are going to introduce a very exciting model to the UK market under the Nismo brand.
No clear timeline has been set for when it could be revealed, though, and we potentially have most of the decade to wait for it. And Nissan may be in no rush to launch the model yet because, as Autocar speculates, it may be looking to give the vehicle solid state batteries of the kind that still aren’t commercially viable now due to their high cost.
With that in mind, we can see when Nissan says it wants to debut solid state batteries in a production car – the set year is 2028 – and based on that we can estimate when the electric sports car could arrive. This would literally put it at the very end of the decade, in 2029 or 2030, by which time the market should have plenty of rivals from the likes of Porsche, Polestar or even McLaren.
Gallery: Nissan Max-Out concept
Earlier this year Nissan revealed the Max-Out concept (pictured), which is its idea of an electric two-door vehicle, a roadster in this case, but it shows that the automaker is already producing design studies for sporty EVs. It looks nothing like a GT-R, though, so if Nissan chose to make an electric replacement for Godzilla, it would probably look more like the current vehicle than the concept, which in turn possibly previews another less extreme two-door EV from Nissan.
