DarthPuppy wrote:evnow wrote:
When Leaf itself isn't selling all that well - it doesn't make sense to offer more choices that would sell even less. Afterall there is a big cost in offering variants.
Not selling well? I seem to recall the Leaf out-selling every other EV out there by leaps and bounds.
Yes, Leaf is the best selling EV in the world and US, but it has fallen WAY short of predictions it has made.
Examples:
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11 ... hief/?_r=0 from November 2010:
"Nissan Will Sell 500,000 Electric Cars a Year by 2013, Says Chief
...
Deliveries of the Leaf are scheduled to start next month. Mr. Ghosn, speaking to reporters in Washington on Monday afternoon, did not say just how many he expected to sell in the first three years. He said, however, that the Leaf would hit 500,000 units a year in three years. Mass production, he explained, would lower costs enough to make the car a sales success without subsidies sooner than once expected. He said he once thought that number was a million cars a year, but now believed it was from 500,000 to 1 million..."
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/108 ... shortfalls
https://web.archive.org/web/20130816111 ... 24822.html - look at that 150K per YEAR production rate vs.
http://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/
For some US sales perspective, look at the sales numbers at
http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2015/07/us ... model.html and Battery Electric take rate at
http://www.hybridcars.com/june-2015-dashboard/.
http://cleantechnica.com/2015/05/05/wor ... -vehicles/ mentions passing 170K units worldwide, but Leaf began shipping December 2010. Also, unfortunately, Japan's 3/11 in 2011 messed things up for Nissan and many other companies, not just automakers. So, that didn't help, back then.