Probably not. Limited vehicle availability in December should not be a surprise to anyone.
Nissan has gone on record many times stating that the only plant to produce the vehicle will be in Oppama, Japan initially. Production capability in the Oppama plant is 50,000 units annually. 50,000/12 = 4,167 vehicles per month. Three global launch areas are due to receive these vehicles – Europe, Japan, and the US. Even if the US is due to receive 50% of production, as has recently been alluded to by Steve Oldham, Nissan Corporate Communications Manager in the Northeast Region, this will mean the US will get a little more than 2,000 LEAFs in December. Break out the five rollout regions (Seattle area, Portland area, San Diego area, Phoenix/Tucson and Tennessee) and each will get roughly 400 units. This only applies if there is equal distribution in all three areas. Of these 400 units, some will go to LEAF dealers as demo vehicles (likely one per store), some will undoubtedly go to each regional office (promotional events, etc), while the remainder will go to consumers and fleet owners (more in a moment). This accounting does not take into consideration that Nissan USA at a corporate level will be retaining some of the early vehicles for their own needs. While many reservationists would love to get a LEAF in December, the likelyhood of that happening is relatively slim.
That said, almost all of those special requirements will have been fulfilled in December and possibly into early January. Which would mean that each region may see as many as 400 vehicles per month (or more) headed their way. Currently, no one but Nissan knows how many reservations they have in each region. They’re not telling. So the natural assumption is that they will take the 2,000 cars that they get in December, and allocate them according to the regions that have the highest number of firm orders. Remember, your $99 refundable reservation is just that. A reservation. Not even Nissan knows how many of those reservations will become firm orders yet. Once the orders start coming in, Nissan will have a better handle on distribution.
Nissan’s partners (such as San Diego Gas & Electric) have also committed, in many cases, to add the LEAF to their fleet. A significant portion of early LEAF production will also be allocated to these partners. In fact, according to an early Nissan press release “The first 1,000 Nissan LEAF electric vehicles will be delivered to fleet operators and select members of the public in late 2010…”.
Spring 2011 launch markets include Hawaii, the Washington, DC Metro Area, Orlando, Houston, Vancouver (Canada), and the states of Georgia, Texas, North Carolina and Massachusetts. The rest of the country will see expansion into calendar year 2012.
Smyrna, TN will be the source of US based production. While capacity of the Smyrna plant will be 150,000 units annually, Smyrna is not expected to come online until the latter half of 2012. Expect supply to be constrained until then.
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I agree, there probably will not be many Leafs delivered in December. However, Nissan could start production earlier than October. I am now speculating without any information or knowledge that they will. Their Nec battery plant began “mass production” this past week. It will probably take the battery plant some time to get up to speed. But it means that the supplier could have as much as 2 months supply of batterys on hand, before start up of Leaf production is October. That is a huge inventory and would seem to violate the principle of just in time production. Is this a signal that production might start earlier than currently announced or that Nissan will produce more than aprox. 4,000 Leafs a month. Nissan has also increased its order from 60,000 to 90,000 batterys for 2011. In any event, with a production of 7,000 batterys a month, Nissan could start produceing that many cars a month stating in January or before and catch up with its orders quickly. I believe they will catch up with all orders in the 5 launch States before Sping. In order to expand to other parts of the U S in the spring as previouly announced.
On the other hand, Nissan has 6,000 plus orders of Leafs in Japan, One would think that they probably would want to fill these orders first for many reasons, includeing that sales in Japan are more profitable than U S sales. It is fun to speculate. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out