Sales of the Nissan Leaf in Australia haven’t been all that great, but then the market is a fledgeling one. Perhaps better pricing will help to spur the market?
Americans may think that had a stranglehold on the muscle-car market and big pickup trucks and 4x4s, especially in comparison to our nearest neighbor Europe, whose vision of muscle-car is completely different.
Australia, on the other hand, has muscle cars and 4x4s that rival our own, which could explain why hybrid and electric vehicles, such as the Nissan Leaf, are having such a hard time building a market there.
Here we are, just eight months later, and prices are coming down again. Yes, I said again, because the Nissan Leaf started out at $52,550 [$51,500AU] in July. In December, the price dropped to $47,950, but sales haven’t really been spectacular [read: depressing] and the Nissan Leaf has sold just 116 units since introduction in July.
Nissan knows it’s difficult breaking into a new market, not just Australia, but also to build an electric vehicle market. “We want to stimulate the market,” said Nissan Australias’s Peter Fadeyev.
Will another price cut stimulate sales of the Nissan Leaf? We’ll wait and see, for now the price has dropped again to just $40,800. This will surely cut into Nissan’s profit-margin, but since the market for electric vehicles is expected worldwide to be just one or two percent by 2020, building that market is going to be painful.
This hasn’t been so everywhere, such as Tesla Motors, which sells a decidedly more expensive and more capable electric vehicle, but is it just a fluke? Hopefully Nissan’s pricing strategy will pay off in a stronger electric vehicle market.
