DESPITE being the first mainstream brand to bring a mass-market battery electric vehicle to the world in the form of the frog-eyed Leaf, Nissan – at least in Australia – is hesitant to put all of its eco-eggs into the BEV basket.

 

Nissan Oceania MD Steve Milette is still fresh behind the desk, having recently transferred here from Nissan North America – which included five years as president of Nissan Canada – and takes the reins at a challenging time.

 

With Nissan’s global struggle to return to profitability hanging overhead, Nissan Oceania also needs to navigate a pathway to get its New Vehicle Efficiency Standard ledger back in the black.

 

In parallel, the fuel shock of March and April has also thrown a spanner in the works by dramatically crimping demand for diesel and petrol models across the board.

 

With a portfolio of one slow-selling BEV (the Ariya medium SUV with just 104 sales in the first four months of 2026) and no plug-in hybrids, Nissan’s Australian operation is truly behind the eight-ball when it comes to offering combustion-independent options.

 

But while some brands are hedging their bets when it comes to powertrain strategy, Mr Milette appears to be leaning in the direction of PHEVs.

 

“I think it (PHEV) is a huge opportunity,” Mr Milette said at a recent media roundtable in Sydney.

 

“This market, similar to the one I came from, has huge geography, people travel long distances, you’ve got the topography of the land, you’ve got off-road enthusiasts, and also the need for utility.

 

“People pull stuff and they love to play, and so I certainly see the need for something that has that capability and plug-in hybrid seems to be what’s going to work best in the short-term and mid-term.”

 

Top of the list of Nissan’s PHEV prospects for Australia are the Frontier Pro pickup, official confirmation of which is believed to be close, and the Terrano SUV, which was previewed as a concept at the Auto China 2026 show in April.

 

Both are products of the Nissan-Dongfeng joint-venture, and both pair a petrol-electric powertrain with rugged off-roader underpinnings.

 

“Terrano as an example, a fantastic vehicle. We saw it – it’s badass,” Mr Milette said.

 

“The Terrano concept vehicle, to me that would be something we seriously need to look at, and there would be demand for that in this country.”

 

“You would have (also) seen Frontier Pro or Navara Pro, whatever it’s going to be called in the future – these are all products that we’re looking at. There’s nothing confirmed yet, but we are looking at them because obviously they would resonate extremely well for our market.”

 

PHEV utes are beginning to find favour in Australia. The BYD Shark 6 spearheaded the charge, followed by the Ford Ranger PHEV and GWM Cannon Alpha PHEV, with the JAC Hunter PHEV and Chery’s upcoming plug-in diesel-electric ute (provisionally named the KP31) just around the corner.

 

With the diesel price shock decimating ute sales in April, the Frontier Pro could capitalise on a shift in buyer sentiment away from diesel.

 

None of this means Nissan is turning its back on BEVs entirely, but the emphasis is likely to be more on PHEVs for the remainder of the 2020s.

 

The next-generation Leaf – no longer a C-segment hatch and now a small SUV – has had its business case deemed unsustainable for Australia, and the retro-futuristic Nissan Micra, based on the Renault 5 and a commercial hit in Europe, is a non-starter due to its high acquisition cost.

 

The NX8 SUV and N7 sedan – also products of the Nissan-Dongfeng JV – may come our way to help provide some BEV diversity in local Nissan showrooms, but an over-reliance on BEV product is something Mr Milette is wary of:

 

“If I rely on my Canadian experience, when there were government subsidies, EVS went up. When government subsidies were removed, EV sales went down. There was a 1:1 correlation, but that being said, I think with legislation like NVES, as a company, we need to make sure we meet those standards,” Mr Milette explained.

 

“Through portfolio management, BEV has to play a role, E-Power hybrid has to play a role – the future evolution of our product will have to make sure it respects what NVES requires.”

 

Nissan needs all the help it can get with NVES right now. The brand accumulated 215,261 NVES liabilities in 2025, making it one of the least-compliant OEMs under the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard, outdone only by Mazda.

 

The addition of the Frontier Pro and Terrano as PHEV options in the LCV and large SUV categories, two segments that provide a significant chunk of Nissan’s sales volume, would enable the company to scrub a significant amount of emissions from its carbon ledger.

 

 

NISSAN is planning to muscle in on the growing electrified ute segment with the Frontier Pro plug-in hybrid shaping as a pivotal model in its response to tightening emissions rules and a rapidly shifting market.

 

While not yet formally locked in for Australia, the Chinese-made dual-cab is widely expected to join the just-arrived new Navara in local showrooms – and it could even wear a Navara badge.

 

Australia’s New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES) is already reshaping product plans across the industry, forcing brands to reduce fleet-wide emissions or face financial penalties. For utes – traditionally powered by diesel – that presents a particular challenge.

 

But a recent wave of electrified rivals has laid the groundwork for hybrids that team an engine (typically petrol-powered) with an electric motor or two.

 

They include the BYD Shark 6, GWM Cannon Alpha PHEV and Ford Ranger PHEV, with more on the way from brands such as Geely, JAC and Chery, the latter set to make waves with a diesel hybrid set-up.

 

The result is a clear shift: the once diesel-dominated ute segment is cautiously embracing plug-in hybrid power.

 

Little wonder Nissan wants in on the action, with soon-to-depart Nissan Oceania managing director Andrew Humberstone suggesting the Frontier Pro could play a leading role, while also allowing the just-arrived D27 Navara – essentially a rebadged Mitsubishi Triton – to appeal to the Nissan faithful.

 

“We have JVs with Dongfeng, we have JVs with Renault, we have JVs with Mitsubishi – we have options,” he said when questioned about where Nissan could source a hybrid ute.

 

At the same time he ruled out a hybrid version of the D27.

 

“For us, it’s about what makes sense and what serves our market, that provides us with that technology.”

 

It also appears the Frontier Pro could at least in some way leverage the Navara name.

 

“If you’re still running Navara, then is that a Frontier?” Humberstone said. “Or if you’re not running a Navara, is it a Navara? You’re probably running them parallel. So do you have a Navara and a Frontier?”

 

He hinted that the naming question would be answered within a couple of months.

 

Then there’s how such a radical new model would be positioned, something that looks set to create a split strategy for Nissan.

 

“You’ve got the hardcore ute driver… and you’ve got the other who maybe wants to take their dogs to the beach,” Humberstone said.

 

“They have different requirements. So are we able to cater for both?”

 

Wherever it sits, the Frontier Pro is an important step in the ute segment for Nissan.

 

Plug-in hybrid utes are emerging as a crucial stepping stone between traditional diesel workhorses and full electric vehicles, offering lower emissions without sacrificing towing, range or refuelling convenience.

 

For Nissan, the Frontier Pro represents a chance to quickly close that gap.

 

The model has been developed with joint-venture partner Dongfeng and is effectively a twin to the Chinese-market Z9, sitting on a ladder-frame platform with independent suspension up front and a live axle at the rear.

 

Under the skin, the Frontier Pro combines a 1.5-litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine with an electric motor, delivering a combined output of around 320kW and 800Nm.

 

That’s significantly more than the circa-150kW/500Nm common in the diesel ute world.

 

Crucially, the Frontier Pro can drive purely on electricity, utilising its 32.9kWh battery for 135km of claimed EV range, at least according to the optimistic CLTC Chinese standard (expect less in the real world).

 

Throw in the petrol tank and the Frontier Pro is claimed to travel more than 1000km.

 

If it can get close to the high equipment levels and sharp pricing of the hybrid utes already in the market it’s easy to see the potential.

 

With more rivals on the way – as well as full battery electric versions of the Toyota Hilux and Isuzu D-Max – the window to respond is narrowing.

 

For Nissan, if the Frontier Pro lands in Australia – and all signs suggest it will – it’s set to mark the beginning of a very different era for Nissan utes, and for Nissan’s place in the country’s most hotly contested market.

 

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Pro-4X is Nissan‘s dedicated off-road brand—a competitor to the Jeep Trailhawks and Toyota TRD Pros of the world. It’s synonymous with extra ground clearance, knobbier tires, and locking differentials—the sorts of things you want if you do serious wheeling. So when Nissan invited me to sample its lineup of 4×4-ready Frontier and Armada Pro-4Xes at Silver Lake Sand Dunes in western Michigan, I was immediately game.

What do all those mechanical upgrades translate to out here on sand? In a word: overkill. To be fair, we got lucky in the grip department. After a dry summer and early fall, our trip to Silver Lake happened to come on the heels of a burst of rain. Contrary to most other performance driving situations, water actually gives you better grip on sand, packing it heavy and tight beneath your tires. Dry sand behaves more like an uncooperative liquid than anything resembling a hard surface, gleefully flowing away from your contact patches. With enough grip, navigating Silver Lake comes down to ground clearance and a little bit of momentum—and the Nissans offer both in spades.

The former, of course, is baked in. In the case of the Armada, it’s further augmented by the settings of its fancy air suspension. You get between 9.6 and 9.9 inches of ground clearance with the standard car (and a bit less with the Nismo), but the extra lift baked into the Pro-4X and Platinum Reserve models provides another two inches on top of that, for a max of 11.6. The Frontier has to make do with a fixed ride height, but the Pro-4X has nearly an inch more ground clearance than the SV 4×4.

Momentum, however, is a different story. If you’re a racing fan, you might associate the term with cars that are down on power relative to their competitors and thus likely to struggle if they can’t capitalize on their typical advantages on technical courses. On track, momentum management can be the difference between finishing first and finishing last. Out here, it often determines whether you finish at all.

Despite my earlier allusions to wheel-to-wheel racing, this is what you might call more of a PvE (“Player vs. Environment”) type situation than PvP (“Player vs. Player”). That was especially true in mid-October, when we convoyed out to the dunes. By the time we arrived, the lakeside town had long cleared out for the season. 95% of the time, we had acres of park to ourselves in every direction. The effect was magnified after Nissan’s chase crew cut us loose with a radio and spoken assurances that they’d be able to locate us should anything go awry.

The rhythm of climbing sand dunes is simple to grasp but tricky to master. Ideally, you generate all the speed you need as quickly as possible, letting gravity bleed it off as you climb. If you time everything correctly, you’ll arrive at the peak with just enough inertia to tip your nose over the crest, but no more. Arrive with too little speed, and you’ll bog down before you reach the top. Get there too hot, and you’ll overshoot, which can send you ass-over-teakettle down the far side. I’ve seen it done, and frankly, I wouldn’t recommend it. Sand’s soft, but not that soft.

To make matters worse, the flow of the trail is constantly changing. Each trip up the dune is a hard reboot—a new surface potentially hiding new challenges. Driftwood? Small boulders? A cluster of millennia-old seashells? You never know what might get churned up—or worse, when somebody might get stuck and make a mess digging themselves free. And when inertia alone isn’t enough to get the job done, that’s when you call in reinforcements—in the form of torque, naturally.

There are two levers to pull in order to increase your available torque: engine output and mechanical multiplication. The first is exactly what it sounds like: By stepping on the throttle, you feed the engine more air and more fuel, which it then converts into torque. The second is a five-dollar way of saying it all comes down to what gear (and range) you’re in.

Enthusiasts get all fizzy over two-speed 4×4 transfer cases for exactly this reason. By shifting into low-range, you multiply the torque going to the wheels at a given speed. This shortens all of your gears, meaning your engine spins at a much higher RPM than normal to achieve the same forward velocity. Translation? Lots more noise producing and a lot less forward progress. Sounds bad, right? Usually, it would be, but out here, it means you can produce WAAAAAH! levels of torque without WAAAAAH! levels of forward progress.

Normally, deep sand is exactly where you’d want a low-range gearbox and locking rear differential, which is why Nissan only bothered to bring Pro-4X models along for our outing. But with all the rain, the top layers of the dunes were packed solid, inviting tires to grab with very little drama. Four-wheel drive was still mandatory, but low-range proved unnecessary. Manually selecting second gear to keep the trucks from up-shifting into the torqueless abyss of fuel-efficient ratios proved more than enough to keep the engines operating within the meat of their respective power bands, and the tires were aired down to aid in keeping the trucks afloat on the crushed white quartz that emerges from eastern Lake Michigan.

My first stop on my solo expedition was the same one visited by countless others over the decades of 4×4’ing at Silver Lake: Test Hill. Its name says it all, really. If you can get up Test Hill, you can go anywhere in the park. It’s a climb of less than 200 feet, and if you do it right, you should complete it in seconds. Get it wrong, and you’ll gain new appreciation for just how high that really is.

My first go was in the Frontier, which lacks the Armada’s turbocharged torque (516 pound-feet!). Still, 281 lb-ft is nothing to sneeze at, and like the SUV, the pickup allows for manual gear selection. I hadn’t driven this truck at all until today, and my familiarization with the powertrain came from the two-minute crawl from our beachside staging area to the base of Test Hill. A few hundred yards away, I could see one of our recovery trucks parked where its occupants could quickly deploy to the stickier spots should anybody need assistance. I decided then and there not to be that guy.

With that in mind, I gave the Frontier about 60% throttle and dedicated my attention to keeping it pointed straight ahead. It not only lacks the Armada’s grunt, but also its heft, especially over the rear axle. It bucked and wiggled its rear end under throttle, alternately biting and then bouncing free as the sand gave way beneath the tires, but with a little finesse and some patience, it found the ruts and settled—just in time for the top of the dune to disappear beneath the Frontier’s hood, followed by the brief sensation of vertigo as the front wheels gently tipped over the crest.

Not today, tow strap!

Committing to Test Hill means committing to several more massive crystalline undulations. This section of the park is one-way due to dangers that would be posed by blind, two-way traffic over the sky-scraping crests. Each successive dune is easier to clear than the one before it, but all are unique. One nearly bends over itself at the top—that’s one you really don’t want to take too hot. Counting the seconds until your wheels touch back down sounds awesome in the abstract, but it’s a bit dicier when your clenched cheeks are about to absorb the brunt impact.

After I concluded my tour in the Frontier, I made my way back to the staging area to find somebody looking to trade their Armada for the pickup. Before long, I was back at Test Hill in the big SUV, waiting on a small buggy of some sort to free itself from its high-centered perch atop the dune. I glanced toward where our recovery crew had been staged earlier and found them missing—probably checking in on another driver, as I’d heard nothing at all over the radio. So I sat while the recovery played out. Once the way was clear again, I saddled back up and charged at the dune in the big Armada—only to bog down completely just short of the crest.

No sweat, though—the trick is not to panic. Off-roading is a hobby defined by one of our best-known societal maxims: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. In this case, that means backing down the dune to the starting point and starting from scratch. It’s simple enough, but you have to be careful about keeping the thing pointed straight downhill. If you get too much steering angle, it’s easy to lay the truck on its side—or even roll down the hill completely. Yep, seen that too.

But 30 seconds later, I was back at the proper launch point, shiny-side-up and ready for another try. I glanced again to find that the recovery crew had returned to its perch with their truck facing Test Hill—like a turkey vulture curiously eyeing what might be a sick bull.

No chance, you ugly, bald f-

I sent some gnarly rooster tails up on the second go, and the way the Armada bit in, I knew I was golden. As I approached the crest, I saw the huge concave area that the buggy had scrubbed out. Just as it disappeared beneath the hood, I goosed the throttle for a fraction of a second to bring the nose up, hoping it would keep the front bumper from coming down on the crest and killing my momentum. It worked. By the time the nose rebounded toward the ground, the front axle was already dropping away beneath me, and with just a mild dab of brake to keep the rear end honest, I was once again gently descending in the right direction. High on the clean finish, I made my way through the park and back around for another go, which ended up being unremarkably trivial.

This is the second time I’ve visited the dunes. My first was at the wheel of a Ford F-150 Raptor R alongside The Drive‘s indefatigable Joel Feder. While that’s a very different automobile from the two Nissans I drove this time around, the experience proved comfortingly familiar for one simple reason: Modern 4x4s are just stupidly capable.

Decades ago, a discussion of must-have factory off-road equipment usually began and ended with steel bumpers, upgraded axles, and two-speed transfer cases. Today, we’re constantly being bombarded by new tech that further trivializes what used to be car-thrashing obstacles. In today’s increasingly massive 4x4s, items like surround-view camera systems and hill descent control can actually enable trickier maneuvers than any commercially available lift kit.

As depressing as that reality may be for some, the simple fact is that the automotive industry has left the short-wheelbase, two-door 4×4 formula behind in favor of modern engineering solutions that allow OEMs to fit massive wheel and tire combinations to mid- and even full-size trucks and SUVs. Even AEV, which prides itself on offering capability without real-world compromises, is finding ways to stick 40-inch tires on anything with four wheels—and the resulting vehicles are genuinely more capable for it.

Can the same be said for Nissan’s Pro-4X lineup? In the case of the Armada, I say yes. Its air suspension keeps it from turning into a tippy mess on pavement and offsets the NVH impacts of its burlier tires. That’s a trade-off I’d accept in a heartbeat. The Frontier’s value proposition is a bit trickier since it doesn’t offer anything to offset the downgrade in creature comforts. For the pickup buyer, however, that may not matter much. It certainly wouldn’t around here.

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