DaveinOlyWA said:
cant compare the Prius to the LEAF. the Prius is ultimately a gas powered car with all the range advantages of a gas powered car. the LEAF is electric and its simply not the same thing.
Nissan did not start selling the LEAF with 130,000 charging stations already in the ground so its not anywhere near a fair comparison. there are major philosophical changes in attitude and perceptions that need to be overcome first.
The Prius was a change no doubt, but it was only "moving forward" on an existing path of increasing gasoline powered efficiency. the LEAF has no path. its very much machete time to fight for every inch right now.
To me this is what makes the comparisons interesting. As you say, the hurdles for EV adoption are higher than those which existed for hybrid adoption. But there are important similarities, and I believe that hybrids paved the "mental" way for consumers to be more open to EVs. Specifically, hybrids were the first mainstream vehicles with electric propulsion systems included. Also, the hybrid sale was initially made to "green" buyers, but ultimately it's success came about because it offered a way to pay more up-front for a vehicle and then recover that cost over the life of the car. EVs are these two things in spades. The initial outlay differential is larger, but the payback is faster (fewer miles) today for EVs than a decade earlier for hybrids, as I've shown earlier.
The other important similarity that I see is that Nissan is not meeting their sales targets and I'm quite certain that Totota did not, either. (IMO, there is no way that Toyota was expecting falling sales in Japan for four consecutive years!) But even though sales targets are not met, neither company is discouraged, apparently because they believe in their vision. I think this last point is the important one, as everyone is watching to see if this is yet another tepid venture into the electric vehicle world or whether it is the real thing. Nissan, like Toyota before them, is stating to the world that this is real.
Sorry, but I see many parallels here and while you cannot make direct apples-to-apples comparisons with the Prius, you can see that Nissan has managed to sell more worldwide than Toyota did, albeit with a different go-to-market strategy. I'll say it again: the product, as it is, is the right one and the time is also right. I will continue to follow this comparison to see how it stands up against the Prius sales.
Here are a couple more predictions:
- The Nissan LEAF will outsell the Toyota Prius in Japan in years 3, 4 and 5 after introduction (2000-2002 for the Prius and 2013-2015 for the LEAF). Does anyone think this is NOT a fair comparison?
- The Nissan LEAF will outsell the Toyota Prius worldwide during the first five years after introduction (1998-2002 for the Prius and 2011-2015 for the LEAF)