Economics of long range Leaf

[minispeed]

Hey if Ford can make the F150 over 300 pounds lighter by going all aluminum and only increase the cost of the truck by $150, then Nissan can do a lot better for the Leaf.

Estimates in the automotive press range from $700 to $1000 on the cost of the aluminum upgrade on the Ford F Series.

Yes but that's North Americas largest selling model. That's a big difference in spreading development and tooling cost over each individual vehicle vs what they could hope to get with a leaf. It would be a big risk to count on more than 50,000 leaf sales a year and the F150 even sold just over/under 500,000 in 2008 and 2009 and almost broke a million for a few years after. Ford can count on a new F150 to sell at least 10 times what Nissan can hope for.

This is the same reason why we don't have aluminum in our current US built leafs, the biggest cost isn't in the material cost per car but in the tooling and production line changes required to use aluminum.

I'm a big fan of aluminum and hope for it to be in the second gen leaf but for that to happen I think Nissan has to invest in aluminum in more models. Since they haven't invested yet they could just as easily choose carbon fibre. The upfront cost is more but it has the potential to pay off more.