Nissan has started testing its new electric Juke – the divisively styled "Marmite" sibling to the new Leaf – on public roads ahead of a launch next year.

The Japanese firm’s answer to the Ford Puma Gen-E and Kia EV3 is set to begin production in Sunderland in the coming months. It will play a crucial role in growing Nissan’s EV mix as the electric equivalent of one of Europe’s most popular SUVs.

The Juke EV will be built and sold alongside the new Leaf, which has morphed from a hatchback into a crossover for its third generation, and at 4350mm long is a very similar size to the Juke - which raised the question of how the duo will be differentiated from a customer perspective.

Nissan’s chief performance officer Guillaume Cartier told Autocar that buyers of the firm's SUVs “are a totally different profile, with nothing in common”.

He said Nissan’s market intelligence shows there is no “hesitation” between buyers of the firm’s current SUVs because they occupy completely “different customer bubbles”.

He acknowledged that the new Leaf is almost identical in size to the current Qashqai, for example, but said the two occupy entirely different positions in the Nissan line-up. 

"One is SUV, the other is more coupé-sedan; one is E-Power, the other is electric," he explained. "Then you have Juke, and Juke is Marmite."

Cartier said the Juke EV will be purposely divisive in its styling, as have been the previous two generations, both to set it apart from its rangemates (including an electric Qashqai, due by the end of the decade) and to make an impact in the burgeoning electric crossover segment.

"You will have people who say 'wow' and people who say 'no thank you, not for me'. Based on that, I think this car will not be compared to anything else,” he said.

Cartier believes there is “room in terms of pricing”, powertrain and spec differentiation when it comes to carving out different “market segmentations” for the Leaf, Qashqai and Juke, “but I'm much simpler: I make sure that Juke and Qashqai do not overlap and Juke is Marmite."

The camouflaged prototype seen by our photographers in Spain doesn’t give much away, beyond the obvious proportional similarities to today’s car, as well as the preservation of defining cues like the heavily raked roofline and visor-shaped side windows, but clearly it will be markedly different to the Leaf and Ariya EVs.

An earlier official preview image (below) revealed that the Juke EV will have its own distinctive light signatures and heavily accentuated body lines - as previewed by last year’s radical Hyper Punk concept.

The Juke EV will use the same CMF-BEV platform as the Leaf and is expected to use the same batteries and motors as that car. We therefore expect a maximum range of more than 350 miles and a choice of single-motor powertrains giving up to 214bhp.

Nissan Europe’s R&D boss has previously suggested that it could have a bespoke chassis set-up in a bid to accentuate its differentiation from the Leaf and promote its more ‘dynamic’ character.

“As the size of the car grows, you change its ride and handling characteristics, or if it sits in a different segment, you might change the suspension,” David Moss said.

Nissan has previously said it's aiming for the Juke EV to cost around the same as the current ICE Juke, which starts at around £21,000, although it has admitted that's a challenge.

It has yet to give a precise launch timeline but has confirmed that the life cycle of the current ICE Juke will be extended and it will be produced alongside the Juke EV at Sunderland, which also builds the Leaf and Qashqai.