New Renault electric van SHOULD be coming to America — as a Nissan

Unless they have vivid memories of guys like Nigel Mansell, Fernando Alonso, and Sebastian Vettel driving the wheels off a screaming, Renault-powered Formula 1 car, it’s tough to get an American to care about a new Renault — but Nissan’s renewed willingness to work with its old partners means we may yet get the new Trafic E-Tech here. (!)

First shown as thinly-veiled concepts co-developed with Volvo back in February, the Renault Trafic E-Tech shown here made its official debut in full production spec and trim at this week’s Solutrans 2025 logistics show. The best part: it arrived looking nearly identical to the radical and well-received concept.

And, in case you’re thinking Renault just got lucky with the styling, you can stop thinking that. The official press release rambles on and on (and on) about the Trafic E-Tech’s styling, going in depth into such apparently mundane topics as the quality of the grain on the new Trafic E-Tech van’s black plastic bumpers:

The front bumper comprises a large section with a black grained finish. Each constituent part was the focus of extensive design work, in order to showcase the overall appearance while avoiding a bulky look. The black grained plastic of the lower bumper section features a laser pattern, similar to Scenic E-Tech electric. This attention to finish is a signature of the new Renault design language.

RENAULT

Nearly every paragraph of the release is like this. Here’s a section about the shape of the van’s windshield that reads, “the futuristic style of Trafic can also be seen in its visor-like windscreen, made up of the windscreen itself and the two side windows.”

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The van’s designers care, in other words — they care so freakin’ much about this niche product that they probably doodle it, idly, in the margins of their notebooks when they’re supposed to be listening in whatever staff meeting they just got dragged into. And that level of caring made me think of a once-and-future Renault partner who could use that level of caring in its North American product line.

Enter: Nissan

Back in March, I wrote that the key thing that Nissan had to do in order to stage a successful comeback was care about its products — and, in that article, I used the lowly Nissan Cube to highlight just how much Nissan used to care about its products.

Nissan used to care so much about its product, in fact, that it once did something that seems unthinkable in today’s modular-construction, Ultium electric-skateboard-platform EV age. And what made that “something” all the more astonishing was that they didn’t do this for the six-figure GT-R or some 370Z halo car – they did it for the Cube.

That decision speaks to an absolutely massive commitment. A commitment to build two sets of stampings, two sets of expensive window shapes, two sets of stuff I probably haven’t even considered, and it was all done for what? To eliminate a blind spot?

Can you imagine the amount of sheer, epic, truckloads of f*cks you would have to give in order to sit in a boardroom and argue that your company should spend millions of dollars in tooling and certification and assembly line re-jiggering because someone, somewhere else, might have a bit of a blind spot when they look over their right shoulder? (!)

The mere suggestion of such a thing would be a career-ender at most brands, and Nissan didn’t just listen to that unnamed engineer, they did it. They built an entire mirror-image of their home market Cube, and they did it so quietly that I bet more than a few of you reading these words never even realized they’d done it at all.

Today, Nissan’s best-effort at caring is launching an “all-new Rogue PHEV” that’s actually a rebadged Mitsibishi Outlander PHEV that was all-new itself way back in 2013. And that decade-plus-old car? It’s a significant upgrade to the last heap that wore the Rogue badge … largely because Mitsubishi, you know, still cares about the quality of its new products.

Renault cares enough for everyone

Renault gives truckloads of f*cks. Van-loads, anyway, and now that Nissan seems more open to enter into JVs with its partners in China and Japan, it seems entirely possible that they’ll come crawling back to their old Renault alliance partner. And, when they do, Renault’s level of caring could do wonders for a next-generation, all-electric Nissan Quest based on the Trafic E-Tech.

Heck, they wouldn’t have to do much more than change the logo on the front and make the infotainment graphics red and white instead of gray and yellow and they’d be there.

And that new-age Nissan Quest based on the Renault Trafic? It would offer up to 280 miles of European cycle range and motivate itself around US roads with a ~200 hp (150 kW) electric motor pushing out 345 Nm (~255 lb-ft) of off-the line grunt — which isn’t too far off Nissan’s last V8-powered van offering!

Great styling, plenty of room, peppy performance, and zero emissions? I’d take a look at it, for sure — and, since there aren’t any other electric van options in the US*, I think a lot of other people would, too.

SOURCE | IMAGES: Renault.

NOTE: I know the Tesla Model X is basically an electric minivan, but a) the bros hate it when you call their Model X a minivan, and b) the doors are stupid.

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