Nissan Bids For Worst Hybrid Strategy

You know that advertisement for the Cadillac Escalade Hybrid where a douchey fellow suggests that “they should hybrid (sic) this thing”? I would post the video, but it seems that Cadillac has pulled all trace of the spot from the interwebs leaving only the marginally less insipid “cupholders” and “checkmate” ads on its website. And though it’s strange to plumb the Tubes of You for hours and not find this mythically inane third ad, it’s disappearance down the memory hole isn’t surprising at all. The spot suggested a troglodyte’s approach to hybrid technology that is only underscored by the reality of GM’s hybrid strategy: quick-n-dirty BAS, expensive and complex two-mode system, and moon-shot EREV. Hybrid this. Okay, now hybrid that. [ED: Zammy found it!] But Nissan’s announcement today that it will be bringing a hybrid version of its Infiniti M to the US market in 2010 has to put the Japanese firm in contention for worst hybrid strategy around.

Or, perhaps not. It’s distinctly possible that calling this decision a “strategy” at all is to praise with faint damnation (so to speak). Nissan’s only other hybrid offering is the plaintively me-too Altima Hybrid, complete with a licensed version of Toyota’s Synergy Drive. And now this? A hybrid RWD luxury sedan? Toyota ‘s Lexus division may have sold 16,858 hybrid hoopties last year, but no fewer than 15,200 of them were of the RX400h persuasion. And from anecdotal evidence, most of the remaining 1,658 hybrid sedans must have been LS600hs. Like GM, Nissan is trying to keep a half-hearted toe in the hybrid pool while nerving itself to leap into the great (ER)EV unknown. And like GM, its unfocused hybrid efforts are consistently coming across as wastes of time and money.

And for what? Does Nissan think putting a single hybrid in each of its US brands makes any kind of impact on the consumer? More troublingly, does Nissan think it can compete with Lexus’s GS for its niche within a niche? GM’s Escalade Hybrid (and pulled ad) prove that hybrid filler products can do as much harm as good, slapping an ugly, cynical face on your ostensibly feel-good, eco-halo product.