Nissan Will Pay RAV4 Owners $1,500 to Leave

Nissan is offering up to $1,500 to anyone who trades in a 2021 or newer Toyota RAV4 on a new 2027 Rogue Hybrid. The bonus is aimed squarely at the owners of the SUV that leads the compact class in sales.

The offer began on November 3 and runs through January 4, 2027, and it applies whether the Rogue Hybrid is bought or leased. It can be passed to another member of the same household, and it stacks on top of Nissan’s other current incentives rather than replacing them.

The details come from a Nissan dealer bulletin reported by CarsDirect, which says the document names only the RAV4 as the qualifying trade-in. Nissan has not announced the program publicly, and Toyota has not responded to it. Jalopnik added that the trade-in bonus can be combined with Nissan’s current 4.9 percent financing for 60 months, and that a West Coast lease on the Rogue Hybrid is listed at $439 a month for 36 months with $4,959 due at signing and 10,000 miles a year, on a $43,805 sticker.

The target is not hard to read. A trade-in window that starts at the 2021 model year takes in the last five years of the previous-generation RAV4, which is the one most owners are driving while the redesigned 2027 model works its way into showrooms with higher prices across the board. Nissan’s own sales rank, as CarsDirect notes, puts the Rogue third in the compact class so far in 2026, behind only the RAV4 and the Honda CR-V. RAV4 sales finally rose in October after falling every earlier month of the year while Toyota ramped up production of the new model, so the pool of owners waiting on a new RAV4 is as large as it has been in years.

The car Nissan is selling them is new as well. The 2027 Rogue Hybrid began reaching dealers in early November with a single launch grade, an all-wheel-drive SR with the SR Technology Package, and the SV, SR and Platinum grades are due in early 2027. According to Nissan’s press kit, the SV starts at $35,490, the SR at $37,490 and the Platinum at $43,490 before a $1,575 destination charge, and every grade is all-wheel drive. The powertrain is Nissan’s e-POWER series hybrid, in which a 148 horsepower 1.5 liter turbocharged three-cylinder engine only generates electricity for a 202 horsepower front motor and a 134 horsepower rear motor, for 225 horsepower combined. The EPA rates the SR at 41 mpg city, 36 highway and 38 combined. The Rogue Hybrid is built at Nissan Motor Kyushu in Japan, and Nissan plans to show it publicly at the Los Angeles Auto Show from November 20 to 29.

The Toyota Report Take

Conquest cash is nothing new, but a bonus that names a single rival model in the bulletin is a tell, and it says Nissan thinks the RAV4 changeover has left a crack it can fit into. Many fifth-generation owners are facing a 2027 that costs more than the car they bought, with the gas model gone and the new one still thin on dealer lots. Fifteen hundred dollars is not a lot of money against a $37,000 vehicle, and a RAV4 Hybrid with a Toyota badge and a strong resale history is a hard thing to talk anyone out of. The more useful signal here is for Toyota: when a competitor is willing to pay for RAV4 trade-ins by name, the new model’s supply and pricing are being watched for weakness, and the next few months of inventory will decide whether Nissan found one.