Open the large door, get in and you find a comfortable cabin with a lot of free room. It helps you breathe easy, all the more because you know you have a clean car. The dark-theme interior has an info-console with needles while the full-colour centre display is aglow. The centre console also has a screen that displays the energy flow graphic for the car. There’s also a very useful 360° camera. The Hybrid won’t hit an eye-watering top speed, but it’s not supposed to. It supposed to fit five with luggage and get about travelling in the most convenient and efficient way possible. And that it does well. The big doors open wide and let you get in and out easily. Room at the front is good and the ergonomics are very likeable and easy to get used to. The rear, too, is very spacious and let me comfortably spread myself and relax. Knee-room is very good and space and seating comfort definitely score very high marks.
The boot is quite high, understandably so, because there is a massive battery-pack mounted beneath the load floor. Even so, a volume of 400 litres with minimal intrusion is good enough for several bags or any weirdly-shaped objects you would need to carry if need be. The advantage of an open cube of space cannot be ignored.
Getting to how it goes now, we had the X-Trail Hybrid at an uncrowded location that had good tarmac with a few speed-humps thrown in for good measure. The X-Trail Hybrid starts off in pure electric mode and seamlessly moves to the combustion engine when the battery needs more juice. However, exercise your right foot, and they both combine to give a greater output. The acceleration is clean and very linear thanks to the Xtronic CVT doing a typically neat job. It’s not surge-forward-with-urgency fast but it makes for a decent drive. The roll, too, isn’t much in the corners. It’s more big car-like than medium SUV-like from that aspect.
The brakes are the regenerative kind and recuperate energy for the battery. To make deceleration comfortable, the X-Trail also gets active engine braking, distributing the force evenly among the wheels. It runs 18-inchers with 225/60 rubber and that means more than adequate grip and good, predictable handling. Try as I might, at reasonable speeds, it didn’t step out of line and carried on comfortably and very composed. High marks for performance, too, then.
Overall, the X-Trail Hybrid is a very likeable car. It’s efficient, yes, but also very comfortable, safe, roomy and thoughtfully designed: all very important things to consider when you’re spending Rs 30-odd lakh on a good, capable family car. The best bit is it’s not a plastic box with a battery-pack to give you relapses of range anxiety. It’s a proper full-size car that can handle all weather conditions and a lot of varied terrain without a sneeze. It may be a big car trying to be green, but — and this is the kicker — it makes sense.
NEED TO KNOW: NISSAN X-TRAIL HYBRID
- Price: Rs 29 lakh (estimated)
- Engine: Petrol, 2.0-litre, four-cylinder, direct injection
- Output: 144 PS at 6,000 RPM, 200 Nm at 4,400 RPM
- E-Motor: 30 kW (41 PS), 160 Nm
- Net Peak Output: up to 185 PS, 360 Nm
- Transmission: CVT, automatic, front-wheel drive
- Weight: 1,538 kg
