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Written by Ollie Kew
Seen the Nissan BladeGlider yet? The all-electric, arrow-shaped three-seater has re-emerged in drivable form, so TG.com caught up with Nissan"s global marketing boss Roel de Vries to find out why Nissan"s been beavering away behind the scenesTopGear.com: It"s been three years since we last saw or heard of the BladeGlider. Where"s it been, and why the long wait?Roel de Vries: The car has been ready for a while. We were waiting for the right moment so we wanted to show the car to the public and let journalists see it at a great moment for Nissan, so we chose the Olympics. We started developing the real car from the concept a few months after the 2013 Tokyo show, and then we said that we wanted to make running models. We engineered prototypes, which we finished only a couple of months ago, and then we decided which place we wanted to show the car. That"s the reason you"ve only just seen the car now.But why Rio? What"s the connection between Brazil and an electric three-seater sports car?RdV: First of all, what"s important to say is that these BladeGliders are running cars. That"s why we didn"t want to wait for a motor show, because we already showed the concept in Tokyo on the stand. These cars are for people to experience, and eventually to drive, so we didn"t want to just put it on a stand. We wanted a spectacular location, and Rio is beautiful. The other thing is that we"re going to use this car for a long period. For the next two years we"re going to tour the car and have people all over the world experience it. So, we had to choose a venue where we could start this BladeGlider roadshow". From the other angle, I think that if as a brand you sponsor an event as big as the Olympics, you need to launch something that really shows what your brand is all about. Something of substance, that matches the scale of the event. So at the Olympics we"ll have three main messages: the local production and sale of our new Kicks model, our fuel cell commitment, and the BladeGlider.TG: Nissan likes to put unlikely concepts into production if there"s demand I"m thinking Juke-R here. Realistically, can you make the BladeGlider?RdV: The desire to make it is really big, but I think what"s important to say is that we didn"t make it as a pre-production study. It"s more exploratory than that. We did it to explore packaging, to see if an EV powertrain and the narrowtrack bodystyle are compatible. The whole set-up of the central driver and passengers behind it"s a study of a completely different driving experience. So, it"s definitely a study into what we think"s exciting for the future and what we think could be a new type of sports car, but if you ask me "will this be a production car in the next two to three years?", my answer is a straight no, you won"t.
Date written: 5 Aug 2016
More of this article on the Top gear website
ID: 4543
Seen the Nissan BladeGlider yet? The all-electric, arrow-shaped three-seater has re-emerged in drivable form, so TG.com caught up with Nissan"s global marketing boss Roel de Vries to find out why Nissan"s been beavering away behind the scenesTopGear.com: It"s been three years since we last saw or heard of the BladeGlider. Where"s it been, and why the long wait?Roel de Vries: The car has been ready for a while. We were waiting for the right moment so we wanted to show the car to the public and let journalists see it at a great moment for Nissan, so we chose the Olympics. We started developing the real car from the concept a few months after the 2013 Tokyo show, and then we said that we wanted to make running models. We engineered prototypes, which we finished only a couple of months ago, and then we decided which place we wanted to show the car. That"s the reason you"ve only just seen the car now.But why Rio? What"s the connection between Brazil and an electric three-seater sports car?RdV: First of all, what"s important to say is that these BladeGliders are running cars. That"s why we didn"t want to wait for a motor show, because we already showed the concept in Tokyo on the stand. These cars are for people to experience, and eventually to drive, so we didn"t want to just put it on a stand. We wanted a spectacular location, and Rio is beautiful. The other thing is that we"re going to use this car for a long period. For the next two years we"re going to tour the car and have people all over the world experience it. So, we had to choose a venue where we could start this BladeGlider roadshow". From the other angle, I think that if as a brand you sponsor an event as big as the Olympics, you need to launch something that really shows what your brand is all about. Something of substance, that matches the scale of the event. So at the Olympics we"ll have three main messages: the local production and sale of our new Kicks model, our fuel cell commitment, and the BladeGlider.TG: Nissan likes to put unlikely concepts into production if there"s demand I"m thinking Juke-R here. Realistically, can you make the BladeGlider?RdV: The desire to make it is really big, but I think what"s important to say is that we didn"t make it as a pre-production study. It"s more exploratory than that. We did it to explore packaging, to see if an EV powertrain and the narrowtrack bodystyle are compatible. The whole set-up of the central driver and passengers behind it"s a study of a completely different driving experience. So, it"s definitely a study into what we think"s exciting for the future and what we think could be a new type of sports car, but if you ask me "will this be a production car in the next two to three years?", my answer is a straight no, you won"t.
Date written: 5 Aug 2016
More of this article on the Top gear website
ID: 4543
