The plug-in sales leader so far
Were these plug-ins rushed to market?
So far GM has sold 928 Chevy Volts while Nissan has sold 173 Leafs. Even more worrisome, sales for these plug-in vehicles declined in February compared to January according to AutoBlogGreen. Why?
In recent weeks and months, both companies have claimed they are simply being cautious with their initial rollouts. Obviously, that’s a reasonable excuse, but is it good enough?
To be sure, GM drew a line in the sand years ago that essentially forced them to begin selling the Chevy Volt in late 2010. Missing this mark might have shocked investors and fans.
Consequently, one might argue that Nissan needed to match GM, since both were trying to overcome Toyota’s green halo advantage thanks to the Prius. Thus, offering the first plug-in vehicles was an important benchmark for both GM and Nissan.
Unfortunately, neither company seems as if they were fully prepared to be the first major automakers to offer plug-in vehicles.
Perhaps in a couple of months, production outputs and sales will make these early numbers irrelevant. I’d bet there’s a good chance that happens. Nevertheless, it seems clear that neither company had really perfected their mass production methodologies for these vehicles, and that leaves open the possibility for technical glitches over time.
We’ve seen such glitches in the Toyota Prius and other hybrid cars, but they’ve been manageable problems. And, if such glitches occur in the Chevy Volt or the Nissan Leaf, they’ll probably also be manageable. However, the pressure on GM and Nissan is far greater than what was on Toyota when the Prius was launched more than 10 years ago.
Again, hopefully these issues are non-issues in a few months, but these early output numbers – from both automakers – are beginning to become slightly worrisome.