You purchase your vehicle - whether it is a Leaf or another Nissan product - from a dealer, not directly from Nissan. As long as the dealer is operating within the legal framework of their dealership agreement with Nissan Corporate, Nissan doesn't have a lot of room to dictate how that dealership operates when it comes to how the dealer ends up transacting the sale of a Leaf that has been delivered to the dealership. There are several dealers on the forum who have already spoken up and made that abundantly clear.
There is a process for orphaning a Leaf, and once orphaned it is up to the dealer how they sell that car. If "selling" a reservation is actually done through following the process for orphaning a Leaf - there doesn't appear to be anything that Nissan can do about it.
Of course, Nissan does have the ability to retaliate down the line - changing that dealer's Leaf quota, holding up shipments of future Leafs or other Nissan products to that dealer, poor corporate response and support for that dealer, and eventually not renewing the dealership agreement. It's not clear that any of these are in the best interest of Nissan or their customers - so it would seem to be tough to do much more then have a stern talk with the dealer - not that that is worth much.
So if done within the process already set up by Nissan, there doesn't appear to be anything that Nissan can do about profitably orphaning a Leaf, whether it appears to be "fair" to those later in the reservation line or not.
