Outlander

Make
Mitsubishi
Segment
SUV

Mitsubishi has announced its new three-year plan, appropriately called "Challenge 2025," which details how it will move towards a carbon-neutral future and its goal to make 50% of global sales electrified vehicles by 2030 with a $1.5 billion investment to source batteries.

This is the information we've been waiting for from the Japanese automaker following the re-establishment of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance earlier this year. Junior partner Mitsubishi, we declared at the time, was the big winner of the restructured agreement and it didn't waste any time moving forward.

With Challenge 2025, the carmaker will reduce vehicle CO2 emissions by 40% and operational CO2 reduction by 50% five years later. By 2035, the entire global fleet will be electrified. Mitsubishi specifically states that "EV" means a combination of plug-in hybrids, hybrids, and pure battery electric vehicles.

So no, Mitsubishi is not becoming a pure battery-electric automaker just yet but it's definitely laying the foundations to do so. By utilizing its two global alliance partners, Mitsubishi will launch 16 new vehicles over the next five years, nine of which will be electrified. One of those vehicles is a new pickup truck due in 2024 followed by a Pickup-based Passenger Vehicle (PPV) a year later. In auto industry-speak, the latter means an SUV. Both will have combustion engines along with a new three-row SUV and two-row SUV hybrid arriving by mid-decade.

The announcement does not specifically state whether those vehicles will be sold in North America alongside the popular Outlander. Nor does it confirm if several other upcoming electric vehicles, specifically another pickup truck and two-row SUV, and two more EVs developed in collaboration with Nissan and Renault, will be sold on this continent. Chances are, at least one of these models will come here.

Our best guess is the electrified SUV. Meanwhile, combustion-powered and hybrid minivans and a new kei car are headed to the Japanese market. Mitsubishi only stated that North America will be getting an "enhanced and electrified product lineup" over the next three years as it collaborates more closely with Nissan. Does this mean Mitsubishi will get a re-skinned version of the Nissan Ariya?

Possibly, but we're still wagering our bets on another PHEV or hybrid SUV. The aging Nissan Murano, for example, is long overdue for a complete redesign, and, if the model isn't dropped entirely, we could see its successor spawn a Mitsubishi-badged cousin. Until then, we can only speculate. The future status of the Mirage and Eclipse Cross was not provided.