Nissan’s Mixim Concept Car in detail

“We found that they are not car enthusiasts… the car is simply not part of their culture. We could make the world’s best TV or cinema advert, but if it was about a car they just won’t bother to look at it. Not even if we put it on the web!

“The car doesn’t make sense for them. It looks like something from the past. We have to figure how we can reconnect with them.”

Mixim is radically different in looks, style and appeal to the typical electric vehicle. The EV as we know it today is a small, boxy, almost ‘anti-car’ design. Used in cities by commuters anxious to display their green credentials, it provides their basic transport needs… but little else. An EV is bought with the head and not the heart.

Mixim, however, is different. Led by Masato Inoue, chief designer of the exploratory design studio, Mixim was created by a design team with an average age of just 25. It takes the most up-to-date EV technology and clothes it in a svelte and distinctive coupé shape. Its wraparound windscreen, inspired by the visor of a crash helmet, dominates the profile while the swept back windscreen, flowing roofline and sharply truncated rear hints at sporting performance unexpected from an electric vehicle.

The concept has a dramatic ‘liquid silver charcoal’ metallic finish with a fluid, liquid-like, surface which accentuates its slightly sinister shape. “We didn’t want to produce another ‘cuddly’ EV, but a concept with genuine character that just happens to be battery-powered,” says Inoue.

“Many of its elements – the head and tail lamps, for example – are emblematic of our design approach. These non-defined wavy surfaces are a metaphor for free thinking and are the antithesis of conventional machine appearance,” he adds.

Diamond-shaped styling cues feature inside and out, notably on the twin air intakes to the rear of the doors and the front LED driving lights, while an upper triangular side window links the gentle slope of the roof with the dramatic angular slash that runs through the centre of the doors. The rear hatch opens to reveal a large trunk area behind the three seats. An occasional fourth seat is also housed behind the front seat module.

Lightweight alloy rims – 18ins at the front and 19ins at the rear – feature fully dished covers to further improve Mixim’s aerodynamic qualities while the wheels themselves are pushed as close to the front and rear of the car as possible. Sitting on a 2530mm wheelbase, Mixim is 3700mm long, 1800mm wide and 1400mm high, making it slightly shorter but wider and noticeably lower than the Nissan Micra. Mixim weighs just 950kgs.

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