Nissan Might Sell At 50% Of Leaf’s Total Allocation In The First Year

By Author: Marty Vergel Baes
Total Articles: 413
Comment this article

The Nissan Leaf is perhaps one of the most popular hybrid cars in the market right now. As a matter of fact, Nissan North America Inc. has allocated around 20,000 units of this model for the US alone. However, the company’s division in North America sees that they might only sell about of 10,000 to 12, 000 units of the Leaf to US hybrid car finders due to a number of reasons.

One of the main reasons for this was that there are actually around 50,000 units of Leaf a year that would be imported from Japan that will be distributed to different parts of the globe. 20,000 units of this will go directly to US market for 2011 and another 20,000 units for 2012.

The limited supply of the Leaf from Japan was reduced by the March 11 earthquake and the tsunami. These natural disasters affected the battery plant that supplies the Lithium-ion batteries used by each Leaf. Although the plant was able to resume the production of the Lithium-ion battery, its start-up is considered to be slow and this could further limit the total supply of the Leaf.

Another reason for the ...
... reduction in the number of Leaf units that would be sold in the US on its first year is the refusal of customers who have made their reservation online to take retail deliveries. Besides this, retail sales has also slowed down since most new car finders who are interested in purchasing a Nissan Leaf are finding the requirements complicated. This is because buyers of the Leaf are required to set up a charging system for the vehicle at home as a pre-requisite for the completion of the delivery.

To address these problems, Nissan is planning to implement some policies that would be useful in promoting their Leaf’s sales and this could include providing affordable auto loans or financing deals to qualified buyers. Aside from this, Nissan also intends to start mass producing the Leaf in the US and this would be accomplished by making use of their plant located in Smyrna, Tennessee. Nissan will be investing an estimated $1.6 billion for their Smyrna plant and allow it to produce as well as install Lithium-ion batteries to about 150, 000 leafs each year.