"Customers that have registered to buy a Nissan Leaf will take delivery before the summer of 2011 ends, Nissan Motor Co Ltd’s U.S. sales chief, Brian Carolin, said on Monday.
Nissan delivered less than 20 LEAFs in December (its first month of sales) and then delivered another 89 in January.
Carolin stated that production increases of the LEAF in Japan will rectify the hold-up.
“We’re now in the process of ramping up. Production is going to be peaking up in March and April, so we’re pretty confident we are going to satisfy all of the orders we are going to get by the end of summer,” said Carolin.
Nissan took in 20,000 reservations for the LEAF as of September 2010, three months ahead of meeting that reservations target. To secure a reservation, each customer put up a refundable $99 deposit
So far, about 40 percent of those with reservations have carried through and bought a car, which would imply a sales rate of 8,000 cars.
Although he isn’t sure, Carolin expects the 40 percent purchase rate to drop. “The number of people showing initial interest is as high as 270,000,” Carolin said.
Once Nissan has taken care of those on the waiting list, a similar sign-up process will take place, but Carolin does not know when that process will resume.
Nissan gave potential customers a wide window for expected delivery and so far it seems as though deliveries are being met towards the longer end of that window
“With a car so novel, we want to make sure that these people are happy and become advocates for the brand,” he told Reuters on the sidelines of the National Automobile Dealers Association annual convention.
The Volt is currently out-selling the LEAF by a huge margin, but Carolin said that even though consumers compare the LEAF and the Volt, they are not competing against one another because they are two different vehicles.
“We don’t have a tailpipe,” he said, referring to the fact that Volt is more like a plug-in hybrid than a fully electric car. “I don’t see that we are in a race with Volt.”
Carolin also stressed that it is important that the first consumers driving LEAF be satisfied “because of the social media buzz they can create, positive or negative.”
When it comers to social media hype, “it’s either on or off. There is no in-between,” said Carolin. “That’s why customer satisfaction is the No. 1 priority. We’re not in a numbers race.”
According to Carolin, Nissan and its luxury brand Infiniti are in a numbers race with their mass-produced cars and trucks. The success of LEAF is valuable to the Nissan’s wider lineup.
“We’re using the LEAF as a halo product” for the entire Nissan lineup, he added."
Em: http://nissan-leaf.net/2011/02/09/nissa ... of-summer/