I saw a headline this morning that Nissan has just dropped plans to produce powertrains for the new Nissan LEAF in the UK. The reason is reportedly that consumer demand in Europe is not as high as hoped for the model. This struck me, particularly because the new Nissan LEAF looks so competitive! It’s won a ton of awards, because it offers one of the best value-for-money packages on the market. The model meets basically all core requirements a family would want from their car, and then it comes in at a high attractive price. So, I was immediately wondering what is going wrong. Why are more people not buying the new LEAF? There’s one thought that has been on my mind for a while. The original Nissan LEAF led the world in EV sales for quite a while. It was the pacesetter for the industry. However, because Nissan decided to not include thermal management of its battery initially, the model had huge battery degradation and a lot of controversy around that. Many people did love their Nissan LEAFs, but the batteries really did not hold up well enough. I wonder if this still lingers in the minds of potential EV buyers. Perhaps there are many who like the new Nissan LEAF and consider it, but then they get concerned that perhaps something major was done wrong this time as well. Maybe they just want a dependable EV and they’re concerned a Nissan LEAF won’t be that. There’s also the possibility that they don’t have faith in the company as a whole, which went on a deep spiral after the controversy with Carlos Ghosn. Who knows? But the news now is that Nissan UK will not expand into building EV powertrains at its factory in Sunderland, England. The people there should be fine, though, as the local soccer team just achieved miracles. It not only stayed in the Premier League after being promoted to it from the Championship last year; it also ended up in 7th place and will get to play in the Europa League next season as well! People there won’t be shedding a tear for the underdeveloped Nissan factory.
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