Leaf has filled its initial 20,000 "reservation" slots.
If preliminary “reservations” are any indication, Nissan is likely to sell out the first year’s allocation of Leaf electric cars.
The Japanese maker began permitting potential customers to place $99 reservations for the battery-electric vehicle, or BEV, months before the first Leaf was scheduled to reach showrooms. But the maker has now halted the reservation process, TheDetroitBureau.com notes in this exclusive report, having already filled the 20,000 slots allocated for the American market.
“We don’t have any more cars,” a senior Nissan executive told TheDetroitBureau.com. That was confirmed by spokesperson Katherine Zachary.
Though the maker has filled all the reservation slots that doesn’t ensure every vehicle will be sold. The maker is using a two-stage order process, partially to help build buzz for the breakthrough vehicle, and partially to help get a better feel for demand for a product that’s substantially different from anything it has ever built before.
The initial $99 reservation is fully refundable and does not require a buyer to go through with the next step, placing a formal order for Leaf, which will begin reaching U.S. showrooms in small numbers late this year.
It’s unclear how many of those initial reservations will translate into actual orders but Nissan insiders say they expect a high percentage of the initial “hand-raisers” to follow through to purchase.
Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn, a strong proponent of the “electrification” of the automobile, has promised that Leaf “will change the industry.” The lithium-ion-powered sedan is the world’s first “affordable, mass-produced zero-emission vehicle, which embodies Nissan’s vision for an environmentally-sustainable future for road transport,” said the Brazilian-born executive, who also serves as chief executive for Nissan’s French alliance partner, Renault.
(For a review of the 2011 Nissan Leaf, Click Here.)
The 5-seat Leaf will get approximately 100 miles per charge – with range running from 65 to 150 miles depending on road and weather conditions and driver behavior – using 24 kilowatt-hours of LIon batteries.
Batteries are the bottleneck limiting initial production of Leaf. The maker and its technology partner, NEC, are building a new $1.6 billion battery plant in the Tennessee, partially with the assistance of a Department of Energy loan. That factory will open in late 2012 so, in the meantime, batteries will have to be imported from Japan to the Nissan assembly plant in Smyrna, Tennessee, where Leaf will be put together.
As battery production expands, Nissan and partner Renault plan to boost overall BEV capacity to around 550,000 annually by mid-decade. That will include capacity for not only Leaf but a number of other battery cars the two makers plant to produce for worldwide distribution.
(Nissan considering offering Leaf buyers a free loan of a conventional vehicle for use on longer-range trips. Click Here for that exclusive report.)
Though Nissan’s U.S. marketing team would like more battery cars to sell during the first year, there’s an upside to Leaf being in short supply. The old adage among automotive marketers is that it’s best to have one car short of demand.
Leaf has already brought Nissan an enormous amount of publicity and having the car in short supply at a time when the spotlight is on the launch of the new battery-electric market only helps increase the buzz about Leaf’s launch – and Nissan’s marketing prowess.
Paul A. Eisenstein contributed to this report.