THE CAR INQUISITION
Nissan’s engineering mastermind talks crossover success and how to follow the Leaf.
Whether it’s the latest Juke’s chassis improvements, or describing how the Qashqai e-Power system works, few engineers can help even the least mechanically minded among us un-derstand technology quite so well as David Moss.
He’s a Nissan lifer, starting there as a graduate engineer in 1990. Over the last 33 years he’s been involved in everything engineering-related, in-cluding being chief vehicle engineer for the third-generation Qashqai.
Most recently, he’s risen to senior vice president for R&D in Europe – aposition previously always held by someone from Japan – and is also now responsible for research and de-velopment for Africa, India, the Mid-dle East and Oceania.
Moss vividly recalls how it all started for him: ‘In those days, R&D was in portacabins – we hadn’t even built the Cranfield site [Nissan’s Eu-ropean Technical Centre in Bedford-shire] yet – and you had to introduce yourself to everyone in the company, in Japanese, using a karaoke ma-chine. Thankfully we didn’t have to sing! But I just thought that was great, it proved there was a real com-munity within the company.’
Along with engineering big-car features such as a sunroof and elec- tric windows into the Mk2 Micra, Moss was one of the team who devel-oped the first-generation Qashqai.
‘It came from when we couldn’t make a business case for the Almera replacement – and never in Nissan history had we cancelled a car before. But the phoenix from the ashes was the Qashqai. I was a cockpit-module manager on that car, and when I saw a physical cockpit of that during de-velopment… there’s no feeling like seeing what you’ve made for the first time.’
It’s a car that’s been at the heart of Moss’s career. ‘My third child is called Qashqai, and my kids will tell you it’s my favourite child,’ Moss jests as we discuss the crossover’s runa-way success, ‘and it was a real pleas-ure to be chief vehicle engineer on this latest generation.’
But the competition is much tougher now than when the first-generation model launched. The same applies in the field of bat-tery-electric cars, where Nissan was ahead of the curve with the Mk1 and Mk2 Leaf, but is now up against a packed field. That early experience has, says Moss, ‘really helped us be ready for the onslaught’.
‘But that’s where [Nissan strategy] Ambition 2030 comes in, with 15 electric model
