Cars Nissan leaf 2015

Published on January 6th, 2015 | by James Ayre

8

2014 US Nissan LEAF Sales Top 30,000 — Sales Record For Any Electric Car

January 6th, 2015 by  

The Nissan LEAF set yet another sales record in 2014, as per the most recent numbers — becoming the first plug-in vehicle ever to see sales of more than 30,000 units in a single year.

To be precise, there were 30,200 LEAFs sold last year in the US — marking a pretty good improvement on the previous year’s sales number of 22,610 units. Given the continuing praise of the electric car, it seems pretty likely that 2015 will see sales of the LEAF continue to grow — over 40,000 units sold in 2015 perhaps?

Worldwide, LEAF sales were up to about 60,000, also a record.

Nissan leaf 2015


 

“Now in its fifth model year, Nissan LEAF is more popular than ever and continues to bring new buyers to Nissan,” stated Brendan Jones, director, Nissan Electric Vehicle Sales and Infrastructure. “From the beginning our vision was to bring electric vehicles to the mass market in a practical and fun-to-drive package, which is what makes Nissan LEAF the best-selling electric car in the world.”

December 2014, in particular, saw very strong sales of the LEAF — with Nissan selling a total of 3,102 of the electric cars in the US. Up just about 22.7% from the previous year, and, unsurprisingly, representing the best December ever for the company’s LEAF sales.

For a reminder of why exactly the company has seen such good sales of its flagship EV, here’s an overview from the company itself:

With seating for up to five passengers, the all-electric Nissan LEAF boasts an EPA-estimated driving range of 84 miles on a fully-charged battery and MPGe ratings of 126 city, 101 highway and 114 combined.

The starting price of a Nissan LEAF is about $22,000 after the available maximum $7,500 federal tax credit, and LEAF offers the benefits of lower running costs and less scheduled maintenance. LEAF offers a wide range of standard equipment plus a variety of available premium features such as leather seats, 17-inch alloy wheels and 7-speaker BOSE® energy efficient audio system.

Despite the fact that I don’t drive (and don’t intend to), the LEAF has always seemed to me to be the most generally attractive (as far as performance and costs) of the electric vehicles out there currently. It’s not surprising that it has done so well so far. How long it can stay at “the top” will be interesting to find out. I’m especially curious about what effect the release of Tesla’s “affordable” model will have. But, by then, the question is, what will Nissan have on the market?

Image Credit: Nissan Motors 
 
Let us know where you’d like to attend CleanTechnica solar and/or EV events.
 
Keep up to date with all the hottest cleantech news by subscribing to our (free) cleantech newsletter, or keep an eye on sector-specific news by getting our (also free) solar energy newsletter, electric vehicle newsletter, or wind energy newsletter.
 

Tags: , , , , ,


About the Author

's background is predominantly in geopolitics and history, but he has an obsessive interest in pretty much everything. After an early life spent in the Imperial Free City of Dortmund, James followed the river Ruhr to Cofbuokheim, where he attended the University of Astnide. And where he also briefly considered entering the coal mining business. He currently writes for a living, on a broad variety of subjects, ranging from science, to politics, to military history, to renewable energy. You can follow his work on Google+.


Related Posts



  • No way

    Nissan sold about 60 000 Leafs in 2014, which is the record. 30200 is for the US market (which is a plug-in sales record for a model in a singel country though).
    So they beat their own record held by the leaf for 2013 (just under 50k sales).

    The Tesla is somewhere around 17k in the US for 2014 and somewhere around 29-30k global.

    The Tesla is number 3 globally (after the Leaf and Outlander) and number 3 in the US (after the Leaf and the Volt).

    • Will E

      outlander is not total electric.
      needs to be total electric.

      • No way

        No, it doesn’t need to be totally electric. EV’s like PHEV’s and EREV’s will have a larger impact in the rEVolution and emisisons than pure BEV’s in a 10 year perspective.

        • Bob_Wallace

          I’d bet not. Within five years battery prices are likely to be low enough in price and range high enough to justify hauling around an internal combustion engine.

          • No way

            The car manufacturing apparatus is huge and slow moving and the money maker is the ICE

            Manufacturers like BMW, Mercedes, VW have stated that all their models will come in a PHEV version. So has Volvo, which will be done with that by 2017.
            Hyundai has stated that by 2020 they will have at least 12 PHEV models and one BEV model (which rumours have it might become 2 or even 3 models by 2020).
            Fiat (Chrysler) has confirmed 2 phevs, no BEVs.
            BYD are keeping their 5-4-2 strategy by PHEVs.

            And with the tough EU regulations coming up at 2020 the most viable solution to get there has so far been to have PHEV versions of (almost) all models by then so expect more manufacturers to come to the same conclusion and announce that plan.

            In five years hopefully the battery prices will be low enough that it will start to make sense for the mass market to buy BEV’s at high numbers. But then it will take at least another 5 years to grow that market and get all the big manufacturers aboard and running at high volumes.

            So hopefully it will “only” take 10 years for BEVs to get back to at least half the sales of PHEVs (assuming that PHEV’s on average run 50% of their miles on electricity so a 2:1 ration would make the impact equal).
            But it’s very likely it will take more than 10 years.

          • http://zacharyshahan.com/ Zachary Shahan

            I saw that BMW was planning to electrify all of its models, but didn’t see a statement that they all be PHEVs. Have a link on that?

          • No way
          • No way

            It will be interesting to see what solutions the car companies who haven’t clearly stated their strategy for the 2020 regulations will come up with.
            It’s a pretty massive reduction (25-30% with only 5-ish years to go) so it’s not something to take lightly. Companies like BMW and Mercedes will probably not make it without PHEV sales in the region of 25+% of their total EU sales.

            Good times for electrification. :)

Back to Top ↑

© 2016   Sustainable Enterprises Media, Inc.



Back to Top ↑

Shares