Nissan Leaf now the World's most successful plug-in car
News articles recently have speculated on the Nissan Leaf's future, based only on the relatively stagnant level of US sales in 2012.
What most US reporters overlook, of course, is that Nissan is not an American company - they are Japanese, and focused globally. There is no need to judge the success of their cars based only on US sales.
If fact, worldwide - the Leaf has sold nearly 50,000 plug-in cars in the last two years. This beats the Chevy Volt at around 40,000 total cars sold, and dwarfs all the other plug-ins, like the Toyota PiP.
Nissan has had little expectation of major sales success in the US until their Tennessee plant opens this year. With Leafs soon to be assembled here in the USA, the US price will drop.
Leaf will become the least expensive EV for sale, just a bit over $20k after rebate.
Source: Leaf's Wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf#Markets
...Since December 2010, Nissan has sold more than 48,500 Leafs worldwide during its first two years in the market, making the Leaf the world's best-selling highway-capable electric car. The top selling markets are Japan with about 21,000 Leafs sold through December 2012, the United States with 19,512 units sold through December 2012, and Europe with more than 6,000 units sold by October 2012
To put the sales numbers into perspective, here's a 2012 sales chart of ALL car models for sale in the US (266 different car models.) Remember these are US sales numbers, international sales aren't listed:
http://www.goodcarbadcar.net/2013/01/2012-usa-auto-sales-rankings-by-m odel7.html
It shows that any car getting 20,000 to 30,000 sales per year (Both Leaf and Volt fall into this category) would easily rank in the top half for sales among all car models available. No car which outranks most car models for sale (as both Leaf and Volt do) could reasonably be considered a failure.