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By Joe Boomgaard | MiBiz
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DEARBORN – The new Nissan Leaf may be many things – the first mass-market all-electric vehicle being its top honor – but it’s hardly attractive.
The Leaf has weird swoops and dips and fins and a bulbous rear end. Observers know to avoid looking at what is akin to the buttock cleavage of automotive rear ends, but that’s easier said than done.
“Just one little peek shouldn’t hurt … OH, MAN! Why’d I do that?”
At least the strange form does contribute to function, according to Nissan. Those upswept headlights, for example, help divert airflow away from the side mirrors. If the swoops weren’t there, the sound of wind rushing over the mirrors would be the dominant cabin noise besides the road noise from the tires.
Regardless, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and at least Nissan didn’t succumb to Prius Syndrome, the practice of some automakers – cough, Honda and General Motors, cough – to attempt to copy the success of Toyota’s Prius by also mimicking its shape. The Leaf, like its looks or not, is original.
And through September, more than 15,000 people – about half of them in the U.S. – have plopped down the $35,200 before incentives to buy a new Leaf since it launched last December.
Driving a Leaf felt familiar during a recent ride and drive event part of the Business of Plugging In conference in Dearborn. Punch the accelerator – it can’t really be called the “gas” anymore – and its electric motors’ instantaneous torque pulls you forward with gusto. In a car the size of the Leaf, some 207 lb-feet of torque goes a long way. The thrust is instantaneous with electric motors. There’s no building up the revs and waiting to hit the torque curve, and as a result, the driver is never left with an underpowered feel.
But it’s the interior that fails to live up to the Leaf’s price point. In the version available at the ride and drive, the interior finishes seemed low-rent for such a showpiece of technological innovation. Look for that to be corrected in the Infiniti, perhaps.
Nissan has invested $4.5 billion in vehicle electrification and plans to have 550,000 units of product capacity up and running by 2014. Mark Perry, director of product planning and strategy at Nissan Americas, said the company is on pace to sell 20,000 for the 2011 calendar year, again with half moving in the U.S. market.
The vehicles serve as roving research modules for the company, he said. Each vehicle collects data hourly and sends it to Nissan, which helps supplement the traditional information the company gleans from its customers.
What the company has found via traditional data collection is that the early adopters of the Leaf are the people living the green lifestyle, as was expected, but also are technology savvy customers, Perry said. Although he wouldn’t reveal specifics, he said Leaf buyers’ “household income definitely qualifies under the wealthy category.” Buyers alsohold a higher percentage of Ph.D.s than buyers of traditional vehicles. Most buyers use their Leafs as their primary mode of transportation, he said.
“The electrification of the auto industry is not an ‘if,’ it’s a ‘when,’” Perry said. “The jump from the early adopters grew to the pragmatic majority.”
Nissan is planning for 10 percent of vehicles sales to be EVs by 2020, much higher than the analysts’ industry predictions of 1 or 2 percent. Perry said Nissan’s ability to achieve its goals will be driven by scale. The company plans to roll out electrified vehicle technology through its Infiniti line, as well as in a commercial Nissan delivery van.
Nissan also plans to gain further economies of scale through its partnership with Renault in the Renault Nissan Purchasing Organization. Renault plans to launch some half-dozen EVs based on Nissan architecture.
As more customers buy EVs like the Leaf, the cost of the technology will “get down to the level where they’re competitive head-to-head with internal combustion engines,” Perry said. “Time will tell, and consumers will make the final decision. Today, do the math – we’re there today, and the message needs to get out: With total cost of ownership, we’re even or better than the internal combustion engine.”