Nissan News: Nissan Is Running Low On Leafs

[William Maley]

William Maley

Staff Writer - CheersandGears.com

July 18, 2013

"If you slash prices, they will come."

Okay, maybe I sightly altered one of the famous quotes from Field of Dreams, but if you worked at Nissan, this quote would ring very true. Earlier this year, the company announced they would be cutting the price of Leaf by $6,000 and extending the range. This price cut is working as past few months have seen Leaf sales right around 2,000 unit mark. This has also prompted other EV manufacturers to either offer incentives or price drops.

The price drop has also caused a problem for Nissan; the demand for Leafs is outstripping the supply.

"We're going to be short on inventory all through the summer. It will be late fall before we can produce enough to satisfy everybody," said Erik Gottfried, Nissan's director of electric vehicle sales and marketing.

This is mostly due to the slow ramp-up of Nissan's Smyrna, TN plant where the Leaf is built. The plant can produce 10,000 Leafs a month. But at the moment, the plant is no where near that point.

Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required)

William Maley is a staff writer for Cheers & Gears. He can be reached at [email protected] or you can follow him on twitter at @realmudmonster.

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[David]

GM really needs to consider a price cut on VOLTS and an expansion to other platforms of this power train.

Roomy mid size awd CUV with this powertrain would be perfect for my wife and I suspect allot of other people who want this.

Course it is very interesting that NO ONE is willing to talk about just how much CO2 is produced to make one of these battery packs that allows a person to drive green.

Last time I researched into this, one battery pack produced the equal amount of CO2 to driving a compact petrol car for 10 years give or take a year depending on driving habits.

[Drew Dowdell]

I've recently discovered a few downtown charging stations in Pittsburgh. If I wasn't shopping for a truck and I was planning at staying in my current position longer, a Volt would make great sense for me. I spied it when spotting a LEAF in an odd parking spot in my normal garage downtown.

[A Horse With No Name]

Leaf is selling very well around here, one of the things Nissan actually got right!

[Drew Dowdell]

There are lots here too. I saw one climbing the hills around Morgantown this week also.... he was easily able to outrun my big american V8.

[A Horse With No Name]

The way to sell electric cars is not by selling them as Eco friendly. Sell them based on the advantages they possess to the motoring public. Tesla is talking about bringing out a family car at about 40 k in a few years....methinks that might be the end of my driving internal combustion cars.