Strong start for Nissan Leaf electric vehicle reservations
As we reported last week, Nissan has opened an online system to reserve a place in line for the upcoming Leaf electric vehicle. Although reservations cost $99, Nissan notes that the vehicle is off to a healthy start with 6,635 takers after only 65 hours. Nissan reports that 2,700 of those reservations came in the first three hours alone.
In Japan, which has a much smaller automobile market than the US, the company received an impressive 3,700 orders in the three weeks after it started taking reservations on April 1st.
Nissan boasts that pre-orders in Japan and the US have so far exceeded their expectations. The automaker recently announced a $1.4 billion expansion to its Smyrna, Tennessee manufacturing plant to build both the car and its advanced lithium-ion battery pack.
The company notes that because of the battery pack’s bulky size and hefty weight, it makes more financial sense to build electric vehicles close to the markets in which they are sold, a plus for proponents of ‘buy local’ policies.
The Leaf will come in two trim levels and the upper “SL” trim level is so far leading the lower “SV” trim level by three to one. The SL model costs an additional $940 and includes extras like a backup camera, solar panel spoiler, fog lights, and automatic headlights. The vehicle has an estimated range of 100 miles in real-world driving conditions.
The Nissan Leaf will go on sale later this year and will be first released in areas where Nissan has government partners who are already helping to build a public charging infrastructure and ensure that there are no surprise zoning restrictions for charging units installed at customer homes. California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, and Tennessee will lead the way and Nissan plans to expand sales to the rest of the country in late 2011.
UPDATE: To clarify, the 6,635 early reservations have all come from the roughly 115,000 people who had signed up to be on the Leaf’s email list. Nissan will begin offering reservations to the general public on May 15th.
