2025 Nissan Qashqai Ti e-Power review: Long-term conclusion

After six months, 10,000km and one new tyre, sadly it’s time to hand the little Nissan Qashqai e-Power back.

2025 Nissan Qashqai Ti e-Power: Long-term conclusion

Just as we said it would in November, when we published our long-term review introduction a month after taking delivery, the small hybrid SUV made dozens of trips to the Lang Lang proving ground during the time we were custodians of it, a circa-200km round trip each time.

Aside from the loss of a front-right tyre to one of Victoria’s devious potholes, it proved itself to be a competent and comfortable highway cruiser – something that came as a surprise given its on-paper credentials.

It also featured as our “police car” in the video where we compared Waze, Google Maps and a car’s speedometer to a police-spec laser. While it wasn’t seen in full very much, it was the perfect car for the job.

With a fully charged battery, the Qashqai was able to sit silently, running the heated seats (we’ve got to keep Paul comfortable, after all) and powering the laser via its 12V interior outlet.

WATCH: Paul’s video review of the 2023 Nissan Qashqai Ti

It was also the carrier of our car-to-car tracking camera for dozens of videos you may have watched. When we film at the proving ground, we always do a lap of the track with a camera mounted on a tracking car to get some moving shots for the video.

The Qashqai did a solid job, providing a smooth base thanks to comfortable suspension, and ample power to be able to keep up with even some of the sports cars we filmed.

The rear storage is another surprise with the Qashqai. Despite being classed as a small SUV, it has enough room in the boot for all of the filming equipment we carry to a shoot.

Typically, that consists of a large suitcase (the infamous red ‘Subscribe’ suitcase you may have spied in a reverse camera), a large Pelican case, tripods, a slab of water and a selection of other loose items.

WATCH: Google Maps vs Waze vs speedo: Which best avoids a speeding fine?

I would normally put the rear seats down, just to make accessing things easier once a shoot begins. However, you can fit it all behind the second row if stacked correctly.

The not so good

That said, now the bad. The seats, while comfortable, are not good for Australian summers.

The leather on them turns into a glue-like substance on a hot day, and after running around filming at the proving ground with a camera in the elements, the last thing I want to do is sit in them because I know I’ll have to peel myself off them.

They do have perforations in the inserts but there’s no cooling function. Nissan if you’re reading this please add cooling. In fact, for any manufacturer reading this, ventilated seats should be standard in Australia.

The other negative is the infotainment system. Its touchscreen is large at 12.3 inches, but the camera vision is almost useless unless you’re in perfect lighting conditions. Mounting a GoPro on the back and connecting to my phone for live viewing would provide a better camera.

In my long-term introduction about the Qashqai, I spoke about Apple CarPlay issues. This seems to have only gotten worse; beyond the drop-outs through toll gantries that causes lengthy lag, a new issue has developed…

If you get into the car and turn it on and drive, wireless Apple CarPlay will connect and work fine. However, if you do a couple of short drives – for example running errands – and you find yourself in and out of the car, CarPlay will often disconnect and not come back, regardless of what you do. Even plugging in via a cable doesn’t work.

I found the only way to fix it was to completely disconnect and delete the car from my phone and my phone from the car, then reconnect to rectify. This is not something I have had with other long-term vehicles I’ve spent time in.

Eventually, I gave up on wireless CarPlay and just reverted to wired, which mostly solved the issues. But sometimes the ghost gantries still cause drop-outs.

It may seem like a minor thing, but when your phone drops out and you can’t reconnect, and you’re travelling through a new place, it can be a disaster.

Ride quality and handling dynamics are great, but 95 per cent of the time I was on cruise control on a motorway anyway, so getting the infotainment right matters to me.

Hopefully that’s something Nissan has fixed with the recently launched Qashqai facelift. Yes, you’ll notice our test vehicle here is the pre-update MY24 Nissan Qashqai Ti e-Power, but the drivetrain and underpinnings remains the same.

Travelling with the Qashqai

I’ll preface this section by saying this trip wasn’t a big trip, but it was insightful for how the Qashqai e-Power behaves on the open road.

On a weekend trip from Melbourne to Ballarat, a round trip of about 400km from my house, I expected the fuel economy to be terrible. It isn’t a long drive, but it is tortuous on a motorcar. A lot of hills, a lot of elevation changes and, yes, a lot of speed zone variations – good fuel economy’s worst nightmare.

But I was very surprised by the result. At the end of the trip it had averaged 4.9L/100km. Given you can’t control the engine speed in the e-Power and the small 2.1kWh battery isn’t designed for long distance trips, this is a great result.

The best distance I ever got from a full tank was 981km, when my average speed was 67km/h and the car indicated consumption of 5.2L/100km, which is still very good. So covering more than 1000km a tank is well within the realms of possibility.

However, the ergonomics of the Qashqai car aren’t quite as well designed for long-distance driving. The seats start to become a bit stiff and sticky after a couple of hours – something that could be fixed with a ventilation function…

And the tyres, while designed to be economical, are noisy. Once you hit coarse-chip roadways outside of the city, they become very droney and require a rather dramatic increase in music volume to drown the sound out.

Conversely, the suspension is surprisingly comfortable. The Qashqai rides the bumps and dips of regional roads well and always feels like it’s maintaining its composure. Cruising at 110km/h on the open road isn’t its natural habitat, but the Nissan will gladly do it all day.

It must be said that if you loaded the Qashqai up with four adults, this would be a different story – but for two people and their luggage, this car really hits the mark. It also looks great in blue!

Overall, however, I think the e-Power system could use some work. It’s a great, unique powertrain concept, and with some development it could be a proper Toyota Hybrid rival. But it needs a bigger battery and a more refined, and more economical, engine to make it work really well – perhaps the next-gen e-Power system due in 2026 will fix that too.

Still, any car that can travel 1000km between fills is doing pretty darn good.