Nissan’s VP for product strategy and planning says ‘Plug-in Hybrid technology is a promising path. Clearly we are working on it.’ What exactly does that mean? Nissan executives were staying mum, but they were excited to talk about the Nissan Leaf electric vehicle.
Nissan has big sales expectations for the Leaf – the Nissan Leaf was the first publicly available all-electric vehicle to be sold in North America and Nissan is hoping to ride on the first-to-market wave a little longer. Nissan sold almost 9700 Leafs during 2011 even despite being available in only 7 states initially and only 29 states by the end of the year. Nissan claims that manufacturing was limited by the number of Leaf electric vehicles the factory in Japan could crank out.
Nissan’s plan is to sell about 22,000 Leaf EVs in the US this year says Al Castignetti. After the Tennessee plant comes online at the end of the year, Al said “we could triple our 2012 sales in 2013.’ This comment comes on the heals of a comment last week that Leaf prices could go down when the Leaf is manufactured closer to market in Tennessee.
If he’s right, 2013 sales of the Nissan Leaf could reach 60,000 which would put it ahead of the Nissan Maxima – we will wait and see!
Source: Car And Driver
