Had a Nissan CS online web chat today....
Nissan Is aware that there have been some issues with vehicle allocation, and those issues have been identified so that they will not occur in the future.
Unfortunately you were on of those customers impacted. We are doing our best to get your LEAF to you as soon as possible.
They weren't immediately forthcoming with this. They first talked aobut production schedules, etc.. none of which add up to a 6+ month mess up in order sequencing. As I politley acknowldedged that eash of the excuses was not significant enough to have caused that delay aobut three times, they finally came forward and admitteed there were mistakes ("issues") in the order allocation / sequencing. You do have to give them a little credit for finally saying that. When GM forced us to return our EV1s and wouldn't extend the leases, they crushed perfectly good electric cars with no remorse. So compared to that, the Nissan experience is better. Yes, I had to wait forever for my EV1, with no updates in the interim until they told me it was ready.
(Yes, the tsunami and it's victims is tragic. Blaming any delays on the tsunami that were not actually casused by actually dishonors the victims by using the tragedy to cover for coperate mistakes. The tsunami delayed LEAF production by around 5-7 weeks total. The Oppama plant shut down vehicle production from 3/11 to 3/23 resuming vehicle production on 3/24 sporadically to April 11, roughly 50% capacity from April 11 to end of April and presumed full capacity from May 1 onward. It did not delay production by 6 months or have an effect on LEAFs that left Japan before the tsunami and were delivered out of order. I've donated to the Japan earthquake and tsunami relief efforts and Nissan has kindly matched my donation to the Red Cross. (Via the email Nissan sent out.))
So for sure, some January orders are getting delivered 6+ months ahead of other orders (based on order date to delivery date time interval) and it's definitely a mistake they made, that they say they have corrected for the future. They would not say approximately how many cars will be delivered out of order before they fixed the problem.
During the chat session, as a result of asking the specific questions - Is my LEAF manaufactured yet? Do I have A VIN? What's my delivery date? My LEAF status according to the Nissan CS webchat responses is:
My car is scheduled for production in May, I don't have a VIN yet and estimated delivery date of month of July.