Are you sitting down?

[mwalsh]

When did someone learn that each dealership will be getting a demo vehicles. Both of the two Tucson dealerships told me that I would have my LEAF before them and that they were hoping to get one by February. At one dealer five people that work there have reserved a LEAF in hopes of having one to show people.

Are we sure the dealers are getting one? If they are, my dealer does not know he is or they are not telling me the truth.

That was me. It was what my contact was told this during a dealer training session.

Remember, with all this new news...until we here it directly from Nissan, EVERYTHING should be viewed as rumor and speculation. Even when we DO hear something directly from Nissan we should be somewhat suspect of it until it actually happens, since we know that for many details they are still changing their minds and even formulating the initial plan.

 

[LEAFfan]

I'm not sure why the number of cars in the December roll-out is such a surprise. Any number of commentators, both here and elsewhere, were predicting a 1,000 vehicle roll-out. Given the stated volumes from Nissan, that is about all one would have expected.

I do appreciate the news on the purchase decision and 'booking' process. thanks mwalsh, that was very interesting. I continue to be excited as the dates for release of the Leaf near!

Not a surprise? At the beginning, Nissan said 5000 total, 1000 to each of the five rollout states. Now is MUCH different than what they said earlier.

 

[evnow]

50,000/12 = 4,167 vehicles per month.

That doesn't mean from month one they can produce that many vehicles. There is always a slow ramp-up. Also it depends on when they start the production - afterall it will take a couple of weeks to get them from Japan to US, best case.

Search here for a poll I ran sometime back.

 

[LEAFfan]

I wonder if there will be an additional non-refundable down payment required when the order is placed with a dealer? Does anyone know if there any California laws that allows the purchaser to cancel the purchase contract up until the date that the vehicle is delivered, without penalty?

I can't speak for CA, but here in AZ, my dealer said that there would be NO extra money needed until delivery, and even then, I could cancel without any penalty and get my $99 back.

 

[LEAFfan]

. Of these 400 units, some will go to LEAF dealers as demo vehicles (likely one per store), some will undoubtedly go to each regional office (promotional events, etc), while the remainder will go to consumers and fleet owners.

When did someone learn that each dealership will be getting a demo vehicles. Both of the two Tucson dealerships told me that I would have my LEAF before them and that they were hoping to get one by February. At one dealer five people that work there have reserved a LEAF in hopes of having one to show people.

Are we sure the dealers are getting one? If they are, my dealer does not know he is or they are not telling me the truth.

Same here in the Phoenix area Rich...both dealers closest to me said they won't be getting any demo for people to drive until after the initial rollout.
How's Pepper doing?

 

[LakeLeaf]

50,000/12 = 4,167 vehicles per month.

That doesn't mean from month one they can produce that many vehicles. There is always a slow ramp-up. Also it depends on when they start the production - afterall it will take a couple of weeks to get them from Japan to US, best case.

I always figured they would start building them late September or early October, have about two months worth ready for shipping at the beginning of December, and have them delivered in the 51st or 52nd week of the year. A few weeks of ramp, then steady state in November. That would give them around 6000 - 8000 cars which originally sounded like their launch targets - 5000 in the US a couple thousand in Japan and some in Europe.

If that is the timeline then we are only about 60 days from start of build which means that things should just be starting to push through their supply chains. I can understand how at this point they are not settled on a warranty, but I can't understand how they could still be thinking about whether or not the cars will have L3. It seems that those parts orders should have been made a while ago and manufacturing of the kit already started.

When I hear that there might be significant changes to vehicle features at this point in time - it makes me think that the delivery timeframe is slipping. Things should be pretty nailed down by now, so why Nissan isn't providing more details about the car and its features in a bit strange to me.

 

[mwalsh]

When I hear that there might be significant changes to vehicle features at this point in time - it makes me think that the delivery timeframe is slipping. Things should be pretty nailed down by now, so why Nissan isn't providing more details about the car and its features in a bit strange to me.

This is what I was saying following that one blog posting that popped up out of nowhere last week. I would not be at all surprised about a slip in roll-out timing.

200 cars for the Western region is a pretty small number, considering that the region incorporates at least two states that are in the roll-out - Arizona and California. I was also figuring they'd have ~1000 cars for this region.

 

[evnow]

A few weeks of ramp, then steady state in November.

Apparently the ramp-up is slower.

When I hear that there might be significant changes to vehicle features at this point in time

Where did you hear that ?

 

[sjfotos]

I'm not sure why the number of cars in the December roll-out is such a surprise. Any number of commentators, both here and elsewhere, were predicting a 1,000 vehicle roll-out. Given the stated volumes from Nissan, that is about all one would have expected.

I do appreciate the news on the purchase decision and 'booking' process. thanks mwalsh, that was very interesting. I continue to be excited as the dates for release of the Leaf near!

Not a surprise? At the beginning, Nissan said 5000 total, 1000 to each of the five rollout states. Now is MUCH different than what they said earlier.

In August of last year, per the quoted article below, Nissan was planning on a 5,000 unit debut in 2010. I may well be too cynical, but I have just never seen a large mass market launch of a product go exactly as planned. This does not mean that I think Nissan is incompetent, it is just that so many things can delay the best laid plans. So, while I understand your disappointment, I just never counted on a flawless introduction. Moving from 5,000 units late in 2010 to 1,000 is not huge. Moving the roll-out dates out by 3 to 6 months would be a big deal.

Just an opinion, not the Gospel by any means.


http://www.egmcartech.com/2009/08/06/5000-nissan-leav-evs-coming-to-us-next-year-onboard-black-box-will-monitor-recharging-habits/

 

[adric22]

For me, I couldn't care less about the L3 charging. I don't even want/need an L2 charger. I also opted for the cheaper version of the car (is that the SV?)

However, the wait is killing me. I keep telling myself that I've been waiting for this for my whole life, so another 6 months won't kill me. But there are actually options in the here and now. For example, I've been drawn to the possibility of getting a newer Prius with one of those fancy plug-in kits that promise 40 to 50 miles EV range. Trouble is, I already have a 2002 Prius with an Enginer plug-in kit and it only works half the time and is always having little problems. I'm not convinced the more expensive ones would be trouble-free either. The Nissan Leaf is the real deal, no compromise electric vehicle. That is what I want. But if it takes too long, or the dealer tries to add "market adjustments" to the vehicle's price, I may just say screw it and go with the Prius. I would say the Chevy Volt, but that car will be nearly impossible to get due to limited production.

 

[LakeLeaf]

When I hear that there might be significant changes to vehicle features at this point in time

Where did you hear that ?

We had a post a day or two ago (actually *this* post by mwalsh) which reported his Nissan contacts were being told that L3 would not be standard equipment. Whether that represents an actual change in features, or just new knowledge of something that Nissan was withholding isn't clear - but it certainly seems like a feature change.

 

[evnow]

We had a post a day or two ago (actually *this* post by mwalsh) which reported his Nissan contacts were being told that L3 would not be standard equipment. Whether that represents an actual change in features, or just new knowledge of something that Nissan was withholding isn't clear - but it certainly seems like a feature change.

Nissan has gone back & forth on this feature. Not sure I'd count count this as late feature change.

 

[evnow]

In August of last year, per the quoted article below, Nissan was planning on a 5,000 unit debut in 2010.

I don't read the article that way. It looks like Perry said they are committed to selling 5K as part of the EV Project starting in 2010 - and the author assumed all 5K would be delivered in 2010 ... Infact, I've enever read a quote from Nissan about how many they will deliver in December. It has always been our speculation.

BTW, this is the poll I ran last month. I thought they will deliver between 2,500 and 5,000.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=578

I think all of us who are in the initial rollout areas would be very interested in finding out how many Leafs will be actually delivered in December. Production starts in October according to the newest press release.

1. Nissan promised Project EV that they will sell about 1000 cars in each of the 5 areas. That is 5,000 cars. But there is no indication that all those will be delivered in December.

2. Production numbers have been quoted as 50K per year. This would be about 4,000 / month. This would indicate about 24,000 by Mar 2011.

3. But the production till Mar '2011 has been quoted as 12,000 or 19,000 (mainly in the Leaf "sold out" in first year stories). This would mean about 2,000 or 3,000 per month.

Let us say cars manufactured till Dec '15 can be sold before the end of the year. That would be 5,000 to 10,000 cars. If we assume 50% of the cars will come to US - we can expect from a low of 2,500 to a high of 5,000 cars delivered to us before the end of the year.

 

[sjfotos]

I don't read the article that way. It looks like Perry said they are committed to selling 5K as part of the EV Project starting in 2010 - and the author assumed all 5K would be delivered in 2010 ... Infact, I've enever read a quote from Nissan about how many they will deliver in December.

Yup, I sure could be misinterpreting the whole article. In any event, I am not worried with any of the events so far. Yes, I am a bit irritated with some of the 'start and stop' nature of their communications, but so far, I am reassured that the cars will be arriving and on a reasonable schedule.

Here's to hoping it will all keep on track!

 

[planet4ever]

No L3 is certainly a disappointment.

There are very few places that commercial L2 seems to make sense:
(please feel free to add your own)

o A trip to San Francisco (70 miles) for dinner and a play. If we add a cable car ride to Ghirardelli Square in the afternoon, we'll be in the City seven or eight hours, enough time to charge on low L2 for the drive home.

o Taking our two grandsons to Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk (45 miles). There's not much chance we could make it round trip without recharging, because of Hecker pass (1000 feet) and a couple of really deep ravines on Highway 1, not to mention four passengers (I'm talking strapping big teenagers). But with 2 hours of L2 charging at the Boardwalk even my gas-gauge-paranoid wife could sit back and enjoy the drive home.

It's going to be interesting to see how dealers feel about having a single demonstrator that is only good for 2-3 test drives a day.

I don't follow this. Isn't a typical test drive five miles or less? Even with some "gunning it" to show off what the car can do I would expect they could get at least ten test drives on a single charge. And if they're open 12 hours a day with fifteen minute test drives, that leaves another 9½ hours for recharging during the day, meaning they could crowd in close to 20 test drives per day under ideal conditions.

And as mentioned - without L3 as standard equipment - very few commercial sites will be motivated to invest the $20k+ in the charging infrastructure.

It is indeed a "chicken and egg" problem, but I don't fault Nissan for going slow until the standard is approved.

 

[mwalsh]

I always figured they would start building them late September or early October, have about two months worth ready for shipping at the beginning of December, and have them delivered in the 51st or 52nd week of the year. A few weeks of ramp, then steady state in November. That would give them around 6000 - 8000 cars which originally sounded like their launch targets - 5000 in the US a couple thousand in Japan and some in Europe.

There's this:

Nissan’s 2010 allotment is limited to 13,000 vehicles, due to a combination of unique nature of the components required to produce the Leaf EV, as well as its limited production capability. Production volume will likely increase after 2010, especially if Nissan begins building the Leaf at its Tennessee plant by 2013.

From here:

http://www.autonet.ca/autos/news/environment/2010/07/23/14804026.html

 

[LTLFTcomposite]

mwalsh how confident are you in this L3 option thing? No offense but we do have an anonymous guy on a message board citing unnamed sources in the shadow of many public statements by Nissan that you can do an 80% recharge in under half an hour.

Would the L3 capability add substantially to the cost?

Perhaps Nissan is concerned or has data suggesting that L3 charging is a bad idea for battery longevity, maybe a really bad idea, and they want to make it a limited availability thing (ie even more limited)

 

[mwalsh]

mwalsh how confident are you in this L3 option thing? No offense but we do have an anonymous guy on a message board citing unnamed sources in the shadow of many public statements by Nissan that you can do an 80% recharge in under half an hour.

This came out of statements made during dealer training this last week. Is the information reliable? Well, my person would really have no reason to embellish or mislead. or at least no reason I can think of. Though, as we all tend to do sometimes, the information may have been processed selectively or misinterpreted. However, this seemed so important a piece of information, that it really stuck with this person.

I think ALL information we hear from secondary sources needs to be regarded as a little suspect until confirmed or refuted by Nissan. And, as we have seen, even information that IS correct at the time we hear it can clearly become incorrect as Nissan changes it's position when it comes to certain aspects of the release.

 

[adric22]

Would the L3 capability add substantially to the cost?

That was my thought.. Being that L3 charging is supposed to be a direct DC connection to the batteries, and the "charger" per se is actually not located inside the car, I can't see what expense they would be saving by not installing it. The only reason that would make sense would be an issue of standardization.

 

[LTLFTcomposite]

Would the L3 capability add substantially to the cost?

That was my thought.. Being that L3 charging is supposed to be a direct DC connection to the batteries, and the "charger" per se is actually not located inside the car, I can't see what expense they would be saving by not installing it. The only reason that would make sense would be an issue of standardization.

So what are we talking about here, a heavy gauge wire and an extra plug on the front? And of course related software issues.

If it's an issue with standards how does making it an extra cost option help?