Nissan Sells 100,000 LEAFs, Captures 48% Of Worldwide Electric Vehicle Market

http://insideevs.com/nissan-sells-100000-leafs-captures-48-of-worldwide-market-to-date/

by codex • 13 years ago

139 94 13 years ago

insideevs.com

dangrossman2• 13 years ago

That's 4 times the number of Model S on the road, if anyone was curious.

danhak• 13 years ago

...worth noting that Nissan had a 2 year lead on deliveries.

Cookingboy• 13 years ago

Gasp, a car that's been on the market for almost twice as long and costs less than half as much sold more, how crazy is that?

Still, I actually test drove a Leaf a while back, nifty car, and I applaud Nissan for doing what they are doing. Amongst the snooze fest that is the Japanese auto industry these days, Nissan definitely has some of the most interesting line ups, from affordable, super car performance (GT-R) to pure electric city commuter (Leaf).

TylerE• 13 years ago

The GT-R isn't really an affordable supercar any more, but now even the base model is well over $100k with tax.

Shivetya• 13 years ago

That they have sold so many is a good thing. Unlike Tesla, they don't have the advantage of selling into a market where people have a large amount of disposable income.

I would say that when cars like the Leaf, the sub 100 mile range club, get under twenty thousand after the government rebate then sales should really take off. I have no problem subsidizing the purchase of a reasonably priced electric like the Leaf or even as a stretch the i3 but once you pass into luxury pricing those people don't need the payout from the public

maxerickson2• 13 years ago

They are selling to people with disposable income though, pretty much by definition.

People buying the Leaf are buying a new car that only does one thing better than new vehicles $15,000-20,000 cheaper.

obblekk2• 13 years ago

It's interesting that this model has been unsuccessful in the US, but fits the demand profile perfectly in other wealthy countries.

The American market, as always, is difficult to move.

MBCook• 13 years ago

Don't forget the Volt was practically being given away, which certainly skews the market some.

cowmixtoo• 13 years ago

@40K up until this fall (and 35K now), I would hardly say that is "being given away" prices.

deelowe2• 13 years ago

It's selling like hotcakes in Georgia.

kelseyfrancis2• 13 years ago

Indeed. The $7500 federal + $5000 state tax credits combined with being able to drive solo in the HOV lane make it a pretty good buy (or lease).

mikestew5• 13 years ago

The things are everywhere around Seattle, so many that I've quit waving. There are four in the parking lot at work, including mine, and our company has less than 100 people.

Visiting my parents in Lakeland, FL for a week? I saw one parked in a guy's garage in their neighborhood, that's it. I'll see a half dozen Leaf's just on an eight mile drive to work on any given day. So it seems it could be geographically specific.

jeffbarr• 13 years ago

I've noticed the high Leaf density in Seattle as well. Perhaps we received more because we are closer to Asia.

rgbrenner2• 13 years ago

Did you read the article? If so, where did you get 'unsuccessful' from?

Nissan LEAF launched in the United States in December 2010. The United States accounts for nearly half of the sales worldwide. The pace of LEAF sales has continued to accelerate. In 2013, Nissan sold 22,610 of the electric vehicles in the United States, more than twice as many as in 2012 and more than 2012 and 2011 Leaf sales combined.

Nissan LEAF traditionally has performed well on the West Coast with notable markets such as San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle, but now interest has expanded across the country. New hot markets have emerged such as Atlanta, which has been the No. 1 LEAF market for the past five months.

obblekk2• 13 years ago

Yes I read that. But I seemeded to recall that they anticipated higher sales when they first introduced the LEAF, though I may be mistaken.

username223• 13 years ago

It's not that surprising given that stuff in America is far apart, and public transportation is terrible. A Leaf supposedly gets 70-100 miles on a charge. That's just barely enough for a daily commute for many people working in the East Bay or Los Angeles. And for anyone else who wants to travel, it can only be a second car. Until an electric car can be reasonably used to travel 500 miles in a day, I can't see one becoming my primary vehicle.

EDIT: Note that many Americans can only afford one car at a time.

dan1234• 13 years ago

In the UK there are quite a few electric charging points in public & company car parks, so the car could be fully charged by the time you're ready to drive it home, effectively doubling the range if you don't need to drive it during the day.

programminggeek2• 13 years ago

Wow, I figured there were more than 200,000 RC Cars sold each year. rimshot

programminggeek2• 13 years ago

Man, jokes are not well received on HN.

gjm11• 13 years ago

The HN audience is really tough -- it requires that jokes actually be funny before reckoning them a net addition to the conversation. Preferably funny and insightful at once, but I've seen things substantially upvoted just for being very witty.

This is a Good Thing because it means HN discussions are less likely to get swamped under an avalanche of cheap jokes. (Cheap jokes are much easier than insight.)

nostromo• 13 years ago

Check out how fast this market it going. (US battery electric vehicle sales per year: http://www.electricdrive.org/index.php?ht=d/sp/i/20952/pid/2...)

  2010:     19 (lol, is that right?)
  2011: 10,064
  2012: 52,835
  2013: 96,702

maxerickson2• 13 years ago

The 2011 number doesn't include plug in hybrids, the later years do (with the plug in hybrids being the majority of 2012 sales and around half of 2013).

mikestew5• 13 years ago

2010: 19 (lol, is that right?)

Yes, because despite all of our pre-ordered Leafs supposed to be showing up in December of '10, they were late (granted, they had a tsunami, but that wasn't the only reason). And as far as I know, Nissan was the only one shipping battery cars.

ryanhuff2• 13 years ago

Considering that Telsa brought in $116M in revenue in 2010, I find the 2010 count suspect.

http://www.teslamotors.com/about/press/releases/tesla-motors...

lmm• 13 years ago

Tesla accepted a lot of pre-orders long before they had shippable cars.

rgbrenner2• 13 years ago

Most of that revenue is from selling EVs to Daimler and others. But it does look like you are right about the 2010 number being off..

Tesla celebrates 1000th roadster: Jan 12, 2010

http://www.teslamotors.com/about/press/releases/tesla-celebr...

Full Year 2010 Results "Tesla delivered its 1,500th Roadster during the [4th] quarter."

http://www.teslamotors.com/about/press/releases/tesla-motors...

angusb• 13 years ago

Useful point of reference: the VW golf (Europe's most popular car) sells around 500k/yr, so the Leaf's sales are about 7% of that. Seems significant.

lingben• 13 years ago

Tesla better hurry and bring their lower range car to market

gilgoomesh• 13 years ago

They're still flat out working to expand their factory to get the Model S built. According to interviews I've seen, most of the next 2 years will be slowly growing the factory size. They'd be selling 2-3 times more if they could actually build them.

prostoalex2• 13 years ago

Or wait a few more years when Leaf batteries reach their lifetime expiration, and those buyers are back on the market.

sliverstorm3• 13 years ago

The car has been on the market, what, 3-4 years? Just how fast do you think the batteries will expire?

jwatte• 13 years ago

I've owned a leaf for 30 months now, driven almost 30,000 miles, and still like it.

Also, it seems every second car in the HOV lane in the SF bay area it's a Leaf...

coin2• 13 years ago

Are electric vehicles allowed in the High Occupancy Vehicle lane without being high occupancy (single occupant)?

cpeterso• 13 years ago

Yes. California previously allowed hybrid cars in single-occupant HOV lanes, too.

thrownaway24242• 13 years ago

Yes, a fact which will make any bus rider want to reach for his bazooka. Man, there is nothing more irritating than being stuck in the HOV lane in a bus in a traffic jam consisting entirely of teslas and leafs.

mikestew5• 13 years ago

They are: http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1086720_california-exten...

(As a side note, kind of defeats the purpose of the HOV lane to me, but maybe the "if it sells more electric cars..." excuse offsets it enough.)

cdjk• 13 years ago

Yes, with the right sticker:

http://www.dmv.ca.gov/vr/decal.htm

notastartup• 13 years ago

Do you ever worry about running out of juice while driving? This is the only thing that prevents me, it's the situation where you don't have any juice but need it somehow. It would be great if you could put gasoline in it to generate electricity. It wouldn't even be used frequently (otherwise no point in saving money by using electricity only), just for emergencies.

robmcm• 13 years ago

The BMW has a range extender which is a gas engine that powers the battery. It gives you an extra bit of range, but I think you need it running over a long time, IE I don't think it can recharge as fast as you can drain the battery.

hatbert2• 13 years ago

Do you have the same range anxiety with a gas car? Why not?

pinaceae• 13 years ago

and yet it is completely tasteless designwise. what an ugly, ugly car.

tesla is doing it right, the fiat500e is beautiful - why is it so hard to understand that design matters? the new BMW i3 is not exactly beautiful as well.

mikestew5• 13 years ago

why is it so hard to understand that design matters?

Maybe Nissan did understand that, which is how we ended up with the Leaf. You spend $32K on a car that's saving polar bears, you want the world to know it. How am I supposed to feel smug if I'm driving something that looks like a Nissan Versa?

Contrast that to the Tesla Model S, which IMO is kind of bland (though I'd still buy one if we didn't have the Leaf). A buddy of mine recently said he hadn't seen a Tesla. In Redmond, WA? I guarantee that he saw at least one or two on his way to work at Microsoft that morning. But if one isn't in to cars much, a Model S isn't really going to stand out.

_delirium2• 13 years ago

I've seen that hypothesis floated for hybrid-electric cars also, in particular to explain why more conventional-looking cars like the Honda Civic Hybrid failed to make a meaningful dent into the Toyota Prius's marketshare.

Danieru• 13 years ago

The Teslas are rarer at Microsoft than I expected. Over the summer I made a point of looking for them. The Leafs were easy to spot and numerous. Meanwhile I remember one or maybe two Teslas.

In fact I saw more Ferraris than Tesla Model S. Without a doubt the Leaf is more noticeable and more popular.

yen223• 13 years ago

If you want a car that smug people can feel smug about, at least have the courtesy to make it look desirable.

I'm looking at you too, Prius.

ibrahima2• 13 years ago

How am I supposed to feel smug if I'm driving something that looks like a Nissan Versa?

Wait what, I always thought the Nissan Leaf looked like an uglier Nissan Versa? Wikipedia says the prototype version was a Versa.

Personally, I've been confusing newer Volvos for Teslas a lot recently (both have the brand name written out in 5 letters across the back). The Tesla Model S looks reasonably nice, but like you said, it doesn't really stand out if you don't know what you're looking for. Personally I prefer that, if I were to buy an electric car I'd rather it look closer to normal.

sliverstorm3• 13 years ago

You're right. Design matters.

People who buy alternative vehicles seem to cue in to "different" designs though. I always think of the 90's Prius vs. the 2000's Prius. The first Prius looked like an ordinary car; footnote in history. Most people don't even know it existed. The second looks distinct and a little weird; smash hit.

chao-• 13 years ago

Agreed. My father, though not always a penny-pincher, embraced and supported the idea that he was a penny-pincher, of sound budgetary mind, and so forth. He bought a second-generation Prius not because of any environmental benefit (or not entirely: he had at that point worked in oil for 20 years, and still does), but because to him it showed off to the other folks in traffic "Gaze upon my daily fuel savings, ye mighty, and despair!"

samstave• 13 years ago

I personally think the i3 is hot.

tpurves• 13 years ago

Imagine how many they could have sold if it wasn't so fugly.

yardie2• 13 years ago

It's fugliness is part of the appeal. If it looked like any other Nissan (Sentra for example) then people wouldn't know you paid extra for an EV. For example, a friend has a Camry hybrid. I never knew it was a hybrid until it silently left our parking lot. He paid $4000+ (I think) extra and has nothing to show for it.

EVs on the other hand you, see them, you recognize something that ugly could only be an EV.

nivla• 13 years ago

and yet it is completely tasteless designwise. what an ugly, ugly car.tesla is doing it right.

On the bright side it doesn't catch on fire. </snark> Keeping aside the snark, it doesn't look that bad. The low price tag and the comparable look of Prius makes up for it. I think Nissan and Telsa are competing on different demograph within the same market. Nissan is going after people who think of cars as a utility and are looking to save some $$ on their daily gas expenditure. While Tesla is going after the people who prefer luxury, style and trend.

velodrome2• 13 years ago

The BMW I8 looks really nice. I think it comes out this year (Spring 2014) and costs more than a Tesla Roadster.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_i8

kristofferR• 13 years ago

Damn, that looks really cool.

I've been wanting a car with the "futurist concept car look" for years, but they seemingly never progress to mass production. It's good to see that that's finally happening.

typon• 13 years ago

With a laughable electric range of 35 km, I wouldn't put it in the same category as the Roadster.

yesimahuman• 13 years ago

I wouldn't call it ugly. Rather, it's a bit nerdy looking whereas the Tesla is all Luxury. I'd rather be seen driving the Leaf than a fancy Model S. I hope Tesla makes a design that is a little less expensive looking.

matthewmcg• 13 years ago

Taste is quite subjective. I like the design of the Leaf but not the Fiat. Too bad both aren't yet available in every city!

dcc1• 13 years ago

Great > more electrics > less demand for petrol > lower petrol prices for us non-hipsters

Cthulhu_• 13 years ago

Haha, you wish; more likely prices will go up because petrol stations complain about not selling as much gas anymore, so they have to raise the prices to compensate.

There is no such thing as decreasing gas prices.

bigd• 13 years ago

So true. then (at least in our country) there's the base federal taxation:

we still are paying the following "una-tantum":

Abissinia war 1935

Suez crysis 1956

Vajont disaster 1963

Firenze floods 1966

Belice Earthquake 1968

Friuli Earthquake 1976

Irpinia Earthquake 1980

Libanon peace mission 1983

Bosnia peace mission 1996

...

+22% VAT

brc• 13 years ago

Sounds good...but they will OT reach their original target of 1.5m EVs per year. It was probably a good statement of intent at the time though.

oblio• 13 years ago

This is so nice, until you figure out that the electric car has been around since 1880: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car. Now it's trying to claw its way to 0.1% of worldwide car sale - and let's not try to figure out which percentage of total cars used this represents (probably 0.00001%).

I know that after a tipping point adoption just starts snowballing, but that point still looks 10-12 years away (a market share of electric car sales at 10% or better).

Nissan Sells 100,000 LEAFs, Captures 48% Of Worldwide Electric Vehicle Market

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