New Nissan Pixo to arrive in 2026 as sibling to Renault Twingo

On sale Late 2026 | Price from £17,000 (est)

Twinning isn’t just a hip term used to describe friends who share similar thoughts and styles – it’s also a useful way to describe the upcoming Nissan Pixo. You see, this new small electric car will borrow some of its wardrobe from another car, though it’ll also be free to accessorise all on its own.

The new Pixo will be a sister car to the upcoming Renault Twingo, and will keep the same proportions as that car. That means a compact hatchback shape, but with Nissan's design elements included, meaning a v-shaped front grille and rounded LED headlights.

Our AI rendering at the top of this page shows how the new Pixo could look when it arrives in UK showrooms late next year. And while the Pixo name isn't confirmed, it is both a name from the brand's past – having last been used on a small hatchback which went off sale in 2013 – and is a name the brand has applied to trademark in Europe.

Nissan hasn’t released any technical details about the Pixo, we do know a fair amount about the Twingo since it’ll be borrowing a lot from our reigning Car of the Year, the Renault 5 (R5).

On that basis, it’s likely that the new Pixo will be offered with a 121bhp electric motor driving its front wheels, and with power coming from a 40kWh (usable capacity) battery – that's the cheapest setup offered in the R5. That should give the Pixo a range of around 193 miles, though of course you're likely to get less than that in real-world conditions. Still, it should be enough for the needs of most buyers, especially if they live in the city and have access to a home charger.

Indeed, assuming that the Pixo will match the 80kW maximum charging speed used by base versions of the R5, then a 10-80% top-up should take around half an hour.

Against key rivals, those statistics means the Pixo should stack up favourably. The Renault-made Dacia Spring, for example, offers 140 miles of range from its 25kWh battery while the Leapmotor T03 gets 165 miles from its 36kWh battery. That said, Nissan could use a smaller battery than the R5 in a bid to cut costs.

Inside, the Pixo is expected to use the same 10.1in infotainment touchscreen and 7.0in digital instrument cluster as the Twingo, likely running the same Google-based software which we’ve already been impressed by in the larger R5. 

In that car, the infotainment screen is angled slightly towards the driver, making it easy to see, and it responds quickly to your inputs. Like most modern cars, the Pixo will receive regular Over The Air (OTA) updates to keep it up to date without the need to visit a dealer.

The Pixo will join the Twingo in offering seating for five, and getting a third person on to the middle bench might not be much of a squeeze if the car has a flat floor. A couple of holiday suitcases – or, more likely, your weekly shopping – should fit in the boot with ease, too.

As well as its sister car and aforementioned rivals, the Pixo will face upcoming challenges from the Volkswagen ID 1, arriving in 2027 but very much pitched as a more premium product, and Kia’s own baby electric car, which is expected to take the EV1 name.

A cheap starting price will be a focus of the Pixo, with Nissan expected to sell it for as little as £17,000. That matches the expected starting price of the Twingo, and will make the Pixo one of the cheapest electric cars on the market – barring the Spring and T03.

The new Pixo will sit underneath the existing Nissan Leaf and Nissan Micra in the Japanese brand’s growing line-up of electric cars. It’ll also be joined by an electric version of the popular Nissan Juke small SUV later next year – that car will draw design inspiration from 2023’s Hyper Punk concept car. It’s also likely that the electric Juke will go on sale alongside today’s combustion-engined model, at least initially.

Read more: Best electric cars >>

For all the latest reviews, advice and new car deals, sign up to the What Car? newsletter here