The Next Nissan GT-R Will Be A Hybrid, And It Might Even Be Here By 2030

Nissan's long-running R35-generation GT-R finally met its end just last year after a production run of 18 years. The long-lived sports car went through plenty of iterations and evolutions during its production run, and from the looks of things, the next-generation GT-R will be a big departure from the outgoing model. Speaking to Autoblog, Nissan Senior Vice President and Chief Planning Officer for North America, Ponz Pandikuthira, said that we could expect "some concrete announcements" on the next model by 2028. Earlier this month, CEO Ivan Espinosa confirmed the next GT-R was already in development.

Pandikuthira hopes "before the decade turns you’ll see an R36 GT-R." The upcoming model will be an all-new model on an all-new chassis, he said. As for the old GT-R's familiar V6, that isn't going anywhere, though the changes will be so radical that the "powertrain’s going to be mostly new." However, the GT-R won't be solely battery-powered, Nissan's global head of product strategy, Richard Candler, told Motor1. "I think what we've seen so far is that electric sports cars haven't been hugely popular. I think they’ll come as better battery technology takes its next leap, but the current lithium chemistries are not capable of producing a GT-R-type product. We're not going to go with batteries in the next generation. No way."

"If there was a hybrid powertrain, the block of that VR38 engine (which was the engine in the R35 GT-R) is so great. Why would you throw that away? But maybe the way combustions matter needs to be very different. 
Maybe the heads are very different. Maybe the pistons are very different. So maybe we have to change top end," Pandikuthira said.

Electrification, says Pandikuthira , is a must, though the rest of Nissan's product planning apparatus is clear that a full EV isn't in the cards. Hybridization comes down to tighter emissions regulations overseas in Europe. The continent's emissions regulations are tough, and electrification will be needed to make a big, thirsty sports car work globally, as Nissan wants it to. "[GT-R] will have to be electrified because of emissions regulations at some level, of course. It's just common sense that you would have a sense of electrification, but the battery's a limiting factor. The battery chemistry is not strong enough yet to be able to deliver the requirements of the GT-R," said Candler

Pandikuthira's comments on an all-new chassis are particularly interesting. Developing an entirely new platform for a vehicle is deeply expensive, especially for smaller automakers like Nissan. To commit to a new chassis for its niche, high-volume sports car is a big step. One way to potentially offset costs is to produce other models on the same chassis. It's possible Nissan could scale the platform to fit an upcoming Z or other sports cars.