Nissan Has 56,000 Orders for the LEAF Electric Car?
In a recent interview with Business Week, Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn was cited as saying that Nissan has collected 56,000 orders for the LEAF already. What this actually means, I’m not sure… especially considering that just last month Nissan said they had more than 50,000 people signed up on their Nissan LEAF interest list (which requires no deposit) and that actual pre-orders requiring a small refundable deposit of $100 will begin in April.
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I’m guessing that the 56,000 number has nothing to do with actual pre-orders and that Business Week just got their nomenclature mixed up. We’ll see how many of those 56,000 sack up and plunk down a $100 deposit next month. That will be the first sign of whether or not Nissan’s strategy is working.
The LEAF will go on sale later this year and Nissan has aggressive market hopes for the car including sale plans of 500,000 per year globally. According to Ghosn, Nissan feels they have no real competition in the fully electric car marketplace yet and likely won’t through 2011 and is confident that no other manufacturer will be able to match Nissan’s capacity and production volumes out of the starting gate.
Source: Business Week
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March 9th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
Isn’t that about one per advertisement they ran in the Olympics?
March 9th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
Nathan,
Nice one
They did seem to show one about every third commercial, no? I actually wouldn’t know how many they really showed as I ended up recording most of it and then watching the commercials on 30-second skip with my DVR.
March 9th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
Your story is dated.
Nissan is now saying 70,000 people registered.
http://www.seattlepi.com/transportation/416374_leaf9.html
“About 70,000 people have already registered, said Mark Perry, Nissan North America’s director of products and planning.”
March 9th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
David G,
Thanks for the info and the update. I got those numbers from the BW article that was claiming Nissan had 56,000 “orders.” In the context of the article, the number of people on the list is relatively unimportant… the article was about what BW meant by “orders.” I wonder if the extra 14,000 people were added after the olympics advertising blitz and the Business Week article was using statistics from before then?
March 11th, 2010 at 10:14 am
I think Nissan is taking a huge monumental step in automotive history by coming out first. I think once people start seeing this vehicle on the street they will fall in love with the concept of an electric car, especially city dwellers. And being that this is the only company selling an all electric car I think it will be good for them. By passing the hybrid all together took foresight and vision.
March 28th, 2010 at 10:31 pm
I am guessing Ghosn was referring to orders from dealers within Japan. In Japan the dealers will pre-order vehicles early and the manufacturer will publicize if the orders come in higher then expected so as to garner additonal positive press.
Just a guess.