How many Leafs will be delivered in US this year ?

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.

My prediction there will be some hiccups but they will make their date and deliver at least a small number of cars in December because that's what big companies do. For the sake of this discussion we will classify Microsoft as a small company

The really interesting question IMO is the experience reported by those early users. If the early users are walking commercials for the cars and there is any concern over gas prices/availability it will be Katie bar the door... the opposite of Field of Dreams, if customers are lining up in overwhelming numbers they will find a way to build supply. On the other hand if the cars are petering out after 47 miles or there are reliability issues and gas is in the low 2's it will be a huge disappointment to EV fans.

I think they are prepared to ramp up production based on the amount of deposits. They have about 40,000 deposits overall?

It really depends on how many battery modules AESC can produce, that is the limiting factor.
And, how well they work, and how well the "mass manufacturing" process works as well.

They don't want to produce modules/cells that underperform...

I am assuming they will produce only a few cars per day in Oct 2010, but gradually speed up the production. Taking the simplest form of that, a linear speedup through the first 12 months, I can come surprisingly close to the data points Ghosn has given us if I start at 20/day average in Oct, 40/day average in Nov, etc. How close? By the end of March, my model says 12,680 (Ghosn said capacity was 12,000). By Oct 1, 2011 it says 47,460 (Ghosn said first year capacity was 50,000).

So, having "validated" my model, I will assume that only cars built in Oct and Nov will be delivered in the US this year, and that the US will get half of those cars. Under those assumptions my model says 910 cars will be delivered here this year.

May I respectfully submit a post I made a month ago:
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=283&hilit=ghosn+march&start=78
where I "guessed" about the same thing (not having, at that time developed the "formal mathematical model" above.) :lol:

well, it would appear that Nissan is doing what they can to move up production. since the factory is time limited, i hope they are looking at getting factory up and running earlier. that would imply and additional 4,000 cars before the end of the year for every month before Oct that production can start.

i for one would be VERY disappointed to not get delivery by Dec 31st as that would cost me an additional $3000 in sales tax

planet4ever said:

if I start at 20/day average in Oct, 40/day average in Nov, etc.

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Are you saying a doubling every month ?

Looks like they would need around 160 per day for 50,000 per year, right?
So, maybe 20, 40, 80, 160, 160, ... would work.

At 6 minutes each, 10 per hour, that is 160 for two 8-hour shifts on one assembly line. Starting at 48 (or 24) minutes per station gives 20 (or 40) cars per hour.

Might be possible?
Does anybody have knowledge of typical real assembly-line speeds?

NUMMI can make 500K cars a year.

I think they will actually start in Sept in small numbers and October will reach steady state numbers. They don't take months & months to reach full manufacturing speed, from what I've read (I've Zero experience with auto industry).

mitch672 said:

It really depends on how many battery modules AESC can produce, that is the limiting factor.

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True - but I'd be surprised if they are not already making batteries in full speed. Unlike the car, they won't be making any tweeks to the battery now.

car manufacturing varies by how many lines are running. some assembly stations take as little as 5 minutes, others as much as 15-20 minutes. there is usually a parallel line for the more time consuming sections, etc. so no part of a line gets overloaded or bogs down the rest. overall result whatever station is the quickest should be about what is coming out the door.

the big question is how many lines will be running. most larger factory have more than one. a clue can usually be had when they announce production increases. changing the assembly time is not an option, so if there is an increase of 10,000 units, then each line will produce a multiple of that #.

as far as batteries go, i would think they have ramped up production to max already as well. after the final size is determined which i would think has been done,

I seriously doubt they have started battery production. the entire country of Japan has a massive "space" problem, they would have to store these batteries for up to 3-4 months, that's just not going to happen. Everything is aimed for "JIT" manufacturing (Just In Time), so the batteries will probably not be mfr'd until shortly before the production line starts up.

garygid said:

Looks like they would need around 160 per day for 50,000 per year, right?
So, maybe 20, 40, 80, 160, 160, ... would work.

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I tried to put smileys around my "formal mathematical model" to make it clear I was not serious, but what I was trying to say was 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, ... 240. The problem with Gary's numbers is that they add up to 18,700 by the end of March, while Ghosn has said they don't have capacity to build more than 12,000 by then.

As an experienced engineer I have to say that Nissan's total of four preproduction leafs in mid-June is not particularly confidence-inspiring for December deliveries.

A couple of possible explanations could be that they've actually made many more cars than four, or maybe they're just very competent at developing new car systems.

DeaneG said:

As an experienced engineer I have to say that Nissan's total of four preproduction leafs in mid-June is not particularly confidence-inspiring for December deliveries.

A couple of possible explanations could be that they've actually made many more cars than four, or maybe they're just very competent at developing new car systems.

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Isn't that the # of cars available for the test drives ? That is not the total they have made - where is that theme coming from ? Saw it on gm-volt.com as well. Is that from WSJ ?

It's possible they're the only four made with the latest generation of tooling, but you can bet there are many more.

There must be more.

And you read it right here, on the internet, so it must be true! :lol:

User "Daniel" off priuschat.com got this little nugget from a Nissan CS rep. Though he also advises some of the information he's gotten from them in the past has been plain wrong:

25,000 cars will be delivered in December.

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That is WAY more cars than I thought. I figured they'd be hard pressed to get the 4,700 EV Project cars delivered!

Edit: I now remember Nissan talking about wanting 25,000 orders by December. I have a feeling the CS rep is "confused".

mwalsh said:

User "Daniel" off priuschat.com got this little nugget from a Nissan CS rep. Though he also advises some of the information he's gotten from them in the past has been plain wrong:

25,000 cars will be delivered in December.

Click to expand...

That is WAY more cars than I thought. I figured they'd be hard pressed to get the 4,700 EV Project cars delivered!

Edit: I now remember Nissan talking about wanting 25,000 orders by December. I have a feeling the CS rep is "confused".

Click to expand...

Good relay of information, but I would bet the mortgage on that number being high by a factor of 5. There is no way they can ramp up that fast.

Merging with the older topic.

i think that the rep told daniel what the first year totals would be. now Nissan has been talking about increasing capacity in light of greater than expected demand, but can this be done in less than 4 months? i find that a bit difficult to believe.

as it is, 25,000 is more than the estimate for the first year. to have that before jan 2011?? that is a bit hard to swallow.

i hope its true, but not putting much money on it