Nissan staff truly pulled out the stops to get the all-new 2021 Rogue into the market during the global pandemic. Rogue is the company’s best-selling product in North America, by far – a testament to a well-considered overall package that designers, engineers and product planners have steadily evolved and improved since the model’s launch in 2007. Now in its third generation (coded T33), the latest Rogue is underpinned by Nissan’s C/D-segment architecture that shares more geometries with Sentra, itself a vastly upgraded and improved vehicle for 2021.
“Last March, I was reviewing our program schedules and it looked like everything was going to get delayed due to Covid,” said Chris Reed, executive VP of R&D at Nissan Technical Center in Farmington, Mich. “At this time, we had delays in other programs due to a ‘development overload’ situation between suppliers and prototypes. The hatches were being battened down.
“But we agreed: We were not going to delay this vehicle! Instead, we challenged ourselves and the organization to pull ahead the Rogue’s launch,” Reed told SAE International. Although circumstances didn’t permit a pull-ahead, the vehicle was not delayed. “We pushed through. We did off-line builds at the plant in Mexico when all the suppliers were shut down, when no one was permitted to travel. We kept our testing, validation, and calibration going through the whole thing. So, I’m really proud of this effort and the vehicle.”
The program brief for the ’21 Rogue (called X-Trail outside North America) was expanding the SUV’s appeal to young families, aiming for increased structural rigidity that drives improvements in crash safety, NVH attenuation and driving dynamics. “We put a lot of CAE work into making the structure as efficient as possible, changing its [from the previous-gen vehicle] longitudinal side-rail configuration and re-engineering how the rails interconnect” to redirect the crash-load paths, Reed said.
Rogue’s front rails enter an outward radius before intersecting with the rear rails, to improve side-impact integrity. On the previous model, the straight front rails intersected with a crossbeam. The new design helps Rogue achieve a 27% increase in overall torsional rigidity.
The structure includes major materials upgrades. High-strength steel [HSS] content was increased to 33%, up from 19% on the outgoing vehicle, Reed noted. The lighter-weight alloys enabled engineers to take out 20 kg (44 lb) of structure mass, aided by use of aluminum in the Rogue’s hood, fenders and doors, along with a composite liftgate. Body stiffness contributes to Rogue’s NVH performance, which in the author’s experience is a cut above the predecessor.
According to Reed, Nissan engineers conducted a detailed analysis of the space between components, insulators and glass thickness in a root-cause effort (along with a 5% improvement in Cd) to curb cabin noise and harshness. The vehicle also changed from a soft-mounted front cradle to rigid mount, aimed (along with a new-design independent rear suspension) to improve ride quality and handling. Steering feel and column rigidity is bolstered with the change to rack-mounted electric steering.
A subtle and praiseworthy feature of the 2021 Rogue is its overall handiness and parkability – qualities that most vehicles lose as each generation grows. The new Rogue is slightly shorter, narrower overall and lower than its predecessor, but is roomier in the family-critical second-row area (the vehicle is available only with two seat rows). And cargo volume with the rear seats folded expands by over four cubic feet.
Nissan’s product cadence forges on in spite of its North American vehicle development teams working remotely. “I just got off a Zoom call with 1,500 people,” Reed said. “Our engineers are inherently motivated, to begin with, but it is a challenge to keep them engaged in the current situation. I had to learn how to talk to a computer screen with energy!” he laughed.