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Infiniti Q Inspiration to Spawn New Electric Car Platform

The Infiniti Q Inspiration concept, presented by the Japanese for the first time during this year’s Detroit Auto Show, will form the basis of a new electrified vehicle platform, the company’s chairman Roland Krueger revealed at a presentation in Beijing, where the Auto China 2018 show is taking place.
Infiniti Q Inspiration 1 photo
Photo: Infiniti
Word of such a development has been around ever since January, but this is the first time Infiniti has officially admitted the Q Inspiration will become more than a concept. The Q Inspiration, as it was shown in Detroit, is an electric autonomous vehicle, capable of seating four passengers.

There are no other official details about the new platform available, apart from the fact that the vehicles to be built on it will become, together with the QX50, part of the quintet of new vehicles to be launched on the Chinese market over the next five years.

The idea of introducing an electric vehicle on the Chinese automotive market, the world’s largest, is in line with the goals of most global players in the industry. By 2025, China plans to make EVs account for 20 percent of industry sales, or roughly seven million vehicles.

Infiniti targets triple sales in the country in the following years. In 2017, the Japanese sold a total of 48,408 vehicles in China, representing an increase of 16 percent compared the year before.

“As part of our roadmap to electrify our portfolio, we anticipate that by 2025, more than 50% of new Infiniti vehicles sold globally and in China will be electrified,” Krueger said in the days preceding the Chinese auto show.

The first of the five new models to be introduced locally is the QX50 we mentioned earlier, which will also be built on a new, all-wheel drive platform that will replace the rear-wheel drive one. On the SUV, Infiniti fitted what it calls "the world's first production-ready variable compression ratio engine", the 2.0-liter VC-Turbo.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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