Qashqai tells you, what is the quality of an SUV?

Text | Joey

What exactly is the quality of an SUV?

In fact, for most Chinese consumers, the concept of SUV models is vague. As a single model that accounts for nearly half of China's car sales every year, SUVs can meet consumers' demand for high bodies, large visions, and large spaces, but at the same time, a large number of consumers believe that the barriers and differences between SUVs and off-road vehicles are not clear.

So, the question now is, what is the real SUV.

In fact, the positioning of the SUV contains two more important application scenarios, one is sport (Sport), and the other is multi-function (Utility). Obviously, to create such a car, the first thing to meet is people's demand for cars in more scenarios. But a lot of times, people only pay attention to "Utility", and don't seem to pay much attention to "Sport", that is, the point related to the quality of sports.

In fact, the "Sport" of SUVs is sometimes more biased towards chassis performance (that is, not pure racing scenes). Because the earliest SUV models used the chassis of light trucks, the purpose of which was to overcome the impact of harsh road surfaces on driving.

It is only with the passage of time and the continuous advancement of the urbanization process that more and more SUV owners have basically positioned the scope of activities in the city, the city periphery, and the highway. As a result, it seems that a better chassis, and the resulting better driving experience, has no place to play. The SUV retains a certain degree of passability, even if it is a complete KPI.

However, there are always people who don't think so, and there are always people who want to leave a little living space for the driving experience while providing more functionality.

Nissan, and one of their most important SUV products, the Qashqai, is one of them.

Japanese cars, made in Europe

In 2006, Nissan's European headquarters launched an SUV model named after a nomadic tribe that lived in the Iranian desert. Later, people called it "urban nomads", which is what we now know as qashqai.

Therefore, the Qashqai, which was born from Europe and sold in Europe, undoubtedly naturally has a product point that meets the needs of consumers in the European market, and the emphasis on driving control must also be an important part of its product point.

In fact, this car is different from the positioning of the SUV model sports utility vehicle that I introduced earlier. From our perspective today, it's a Corssover model. How do we understand this positioning? Let me tell you this, since Qashqai entered the Chinese market in 2008, the market has set off a wave of cross-border models at almost the same time.

The entire life cycle of the Qashqai bus type up to now is almost synchronized with the Chinese market. In this process, the SUV models with European driving control genes represented by Qashqai began to balance people's daily travel and demand for driving control.

For example, after Qashqai entered the Chinese market, Dongfeng Nissan further increased its chassis height to improve its passability. At the same time, Dongfeng Nissan has also launched two-wheel drive and four-wheel drive versions respectively, in addition to providing drive mode options, it also creates a number of choices for users to be more passable and have a better driving experience.

In 2014, Qashqai ushered in a replacement. Like the first generation, the second generation of Qashqai is also in Europe, the first to sell in this market that pays the most attention to the demand for driving control. In addition to re-tuning the level it is in for the Qashqai (from a small SUV to a compact SUV), this generation adds a non-independent suspension on the basis of four-wheel drive. Between comfort and driving, Qashqai has no hesitation in opting for a more compact and smoother configuration.

Because of this, after the listing, Qashqai ushered in a huge harvest of sales in Europe. In 2014 and 2015, Qashqai has been in the European market for two consecutive years, and annual sales have exceeded 200,000 vehicles. After entering the Chinese market in 2015, it also easily achieved an average monthly sales of more than 10,000 vehicles in 2016 and 2017. Today, Qashqai's cumulative sales in China have exceeded 1.6 million.

There is no doubt that the market in which Qashqai is located, whether in Europe or In China, is the Red Sea market that major car brands have to do their best to compete for. The reason for such impressive results is most likely that in addition to meeting the daily car needs of consumers, it has never given up the pursuit of driving control experience.

Today, this pursuit continues.

CMF platform, modular lifting

Times are changing, and Dongfeng Nissan is also promoting the continuous positive change of Qashqai. Now, with the continuous advancement of the Renault-Nissan alliance, Qashqai has also caught up with the modularization of car manufacturing and began to use the CMF platform for manufacturing. If you don't understand what the CMF platform means, you can actually refer to Toyota's TNGA platform.

On the CMF platform, Dongfeng Nissan divided the manufacture of the car into several modules: engine compartment, cockpit, front chassis and rear chassis. Under such a modular car manufacturing system, the limitations of the automobile manufacturing combination model are broken. Therefore, products using this system, including Qashqai, can be freely adjusted in terms of parameters such as front and rear wheels, wheelbase, suspension design, cockpit design, etc.

More importantly, the chassis, which is related to the driving experience and driving comfort, has also been adjusted based on the CMF platform. First of all, Qashqa and X-Trail, which pays more attention to off-road performance, use the same form, both using the chassis of professional SUVs.

This chassis developed around the full road conditions of the SUV, in addition to providing very good driving control for Qashqai, can also be combined with a full-frame subframe to provide stronger rigidity and impact resistance for the vehicle in steering and bumpy road driving. At the same time, it can also improve the performance of the vehicle in terms of stability and grip.

In addition to providing comfort for Qashqai, independent suspension can also bring more lateral support points and stronger lateral rigidity. As a result, Qashqai can greatly improve stability and followability when changing lanes or making high-speed corners. In addition, the multi-link form can reduce the impact of the road on the body in the bumpy road, suppress the body shake, and improve the driving comfort.

Combined with the 183mm ground clearance, the vehicle's passability in relatively complex roads is greatly improved. In addition to easily realizing the driving requirements of the city and paved roads, Qashqai can also run across non-paved roads.

Of course, the upgrade of chassis and driving control performance is still only an important product point for the 2022 Qashqai upgrade.

Upgrade again to cope with market competition

Since its inception, Qashqai has been under 200,000 yuan, the most important and fiercely competitive "Red Sea Market" in this market. Unlike when it first entered China, with the rapid development of the Chinese auto market for more than a decade, the SUV models in this market are now very abundant.

Leaving aside European, American, and even domestic SUV models, Japanese SUVs are also blooming in the market where Qashqai is located. Whether it is GAC Toyota's Fenglanda or FAW Toyota's Corolla Ruifang, they all hope to get a piece of this market with their own product strength.

In order to stand out again in such an increasingly fierce market environment, it is obvious that it is not enough to rely on strong driving control strength. Therefore, the new upgrade brought by the 2022 Qashqai is indispensable.

First of all, the 2022 Qashqai has upgraded the interior space of the light luxury style, through the newly designed interior and seats, as well as the use of more leather materials, and with a large panoramic sunroof, to improve the user's driving experience.

At the same time, in addition to the chassis to bring a better driving experience, intelligent driving technology is also essential. 2022 Qashqai's ProPILOT smart driving intelligent driving technology can be easily opened with just one button, in the speed range of 0-144km/h, Qashqai's intelligent cruise can maintain an appropriate distance from the car in front, automatically adjust the speed of the car and brake in time in the face of complicated road conditions.

This reliable driver assistance system, which has undergone 320,000 kilometers of road tests and technical verification around the world, can effectively alleviate fatigue during long-distance, urban daily commutes and congestion periods, and improve driving safety.

In addition, the 2022 Qashqa's Nissan Connect super intelligent connection system also allows the owner's intelligent experience not only to be reflected in intelligent driving assistance. The system focuses on 6 major functional sectors and implements 21 functional upgrades, providing users with a richer intelligent travel experience.

With the 2022 Qashqai 9-inch HIGH-definition screen and two interaction modes including a voice interaction system that recognizes nearly 1,000 everyday sentences, users can interact with vehicles in real time to enhance the sense of technology on travel and bring a richer entertainment experience.

In terms of power, the news currently coming from the European market indicates that the new Qashqai in the future will be more likely to adopt Dongfeng Nissan's biggest achievement in energy conservation and emission reduction in recent years - the e-Power system. If the system is applied in the future, it will further enhance the economy and environmental performance of Qashqai.

Obviously, these technologies have undoubtedly improved the strength of Qashqai's products again. In addition to meeting the multi-functionality and high passability, it has further created the intelligent label of Qashqai.

For Dongfeng Nissan, the boundary between family cars and performance cars is actually not so clear. More often, consumers buy different automotive products with different positioning like Qashqai according to their own needs, and what they can get is the more suitable and technical iteration of high-quality products provided by Dongfeng Nissan.

For Dongfeng Nissan, such a product with excellent driving experience, rich functions and continuous improvement of technology is the most important killer weapon for them to "attack the city" again in the compact SUV market in the future.