The IDX set to be produced in 2018!!??

JDubya

Pierre Loing (Nissan VP of product planning) has been commenting on this topic for the last 1.5 years or so, but hasn't gone into crazy detail regarding specifics (or at least I haven't found it).

To your question though, I've always read the same thing you mentioned: that RWD isn't as affordable to develop.

The popular reasons I've read are assembly costs and the logistics of the drivetrain itself. Apparently FWD cars are easier to assemble in the plant due to being able to drop the engine and transmission in together and it only requiring one angle of access to the car (top or bottom access). RWD cars need these components installed separately and require multiple angles of access to the car (top and bottom access). Supposedly the logistics of tunneling a drivetrain through the car, to the rear, also adds engineering complexities as well as additional parts and cost. I'm in the same boat as you though, I'll readily admit I'm not technologically intelligent with respect to the engineering costs of building a platform, so I'd love if someone here who has a great deal of knowledge could confirm/deny this or add more to the conversation.

The other reason I saw tossed around by Pierre was not so much about the raw costs that RWD adds to the platform, but that developing a new platform, whether its FWD or RWD, simply costs a great deal of money. They couldn't justify creating an entirely new platform that would be used for just one car that would sell 50-60k units a year (their estimates). This seems to make sense to me when I think about how much auto manufacturers re-use platforms for their cars. Rarely do they ever have a unique platform for a car (excluding cars like the GTR). I mean, even look at the Alpha platform Camaro--GM didn't invest all that money for just the Camaro, it was borrowed directly from Cadillac and is being used on multiple cars.

They asked Pierre about a possible FWD version, and while he didn't rule it out completely, he mentioned that in itself would require an investment to completely change the proportions of the car.