Japanese domestic market LEAF delivery numbers revealed

220 Rental LEAFs delivered in Japan

According to Nissan, 220 LEAFs have been delivered to rental car companies in Okinawa Prefecture in Japan – the first of 500 units to be delivered in Fiscal Year 2010, which ends in March 2011 for Nissan. This means that another 280 will need to be delivered in the next seven weeks to meet this target. But this accounts for just a small portion of Japanese Domestic Market (JDM) deliveries since production has begun.

Prior to now, we had not seen any information regarding the number of LEAFs sold in Japan. According to Mainichi Daily News 981 LEAFs have been delivered in Japan through January (we count 87 in the above photograph, in case you were interested). According to “a spokesperson”, Nissan will be capable of producing 10,000 units by the end of March. We take this to mean all production since the October 22 official start of production. Nissan’s plans are to sell 6,000 LEAFs in Japan by the end of March. 10,000 less 6,000 leaves 4,000 for the rest of the world. We know that Europe has already received a handful, as have we in the U.S. Certainly this remainder will continue to be split between the two in some fashion.

Let’s run through some numbers. We know that production started on Oct. 22, 2010. If the first month averaged 10 per day, this would produce 300 (roughly) in the first 30 days of production. Double the production numbers each month, to the maximum of approximately 4,100, and this would bring the total to 8,400 by March 22. Based on very early deliveries (that we are aware of), this would not be too much of a stretch. Throw in another 1,224 (136/day times 9 days) from March 22 to March 31, and production would total 9,624. Clearly, these numbers are total speculation on our part. But one could see how total production of roughly 10,000 could be achieved by the end of March with minor massaging of this production schedule. The Mainichi article also refers to the JDM government subsidy due to end in March as a driving factor in the national market delivery bias. Which would imply that post March, U.S. shipments could ramp up dramatically, which would improve U.S. deliveries about six to seven weeks after that, or sometime in May. As they say… time will tell.

Source: Nissan and Mainichi Daily News